


Recursive

by 111 (Insert)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Action, Bad Jokes, Brainwashing, Ensemble Cast, Extreme Hugging, Multi, Robot Body Stuff, Romance, Saving the World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 70,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22118386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insert/pseuds/111
Summary: During his last year of high school, Fujiki Yusaku is experiencing something close to stability for the first time in recent memory.That is, until a too-cheerful stranger with a hero deck tells him that a magical space light is trying to destroy the world.Again.
Relationships: Ai | Ignis/Fujiki Yuusaku, Yubel/Yuuki Juudai | Jaden Yuki
Comments: 97
Kudos: 188





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> grabs the microphone
> 
> \- This fic takes place after the events of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS. It contains major spoilers for both series. Consequently, while I am trying to keep the canon of both series in mind, I will probably make a few mistakes here and there. I apologize in advance! I’m also going to clumsily tape together GX and VRAINS so that they exist in roughly the same timeline because… Because.
> 
> \- This fic is eventual!Ai/Yusaku and established!Judai/Yubel. 
> 
> \- While this fic does rely a lot on the narrative from season 2 of GX and Judai’s characterization from season 3, it should be okay to read if you haven’t seen a lot of GX, since this fic is largely from Yusaku’s POV.
> 
> \- ...KINDA NERVOUS HERE, so please give me some feedback if you’re having fun reading this! I have about 17k written already, haha!

\---

By Thursday morning, Fujiki Yusaku's normal week at school was no longer normal, a loss that he blamed on the accumulation of three things. 

One. 

On Monday, he reached into his bag after the final bell and found a neatly sealed love letter inside of it, the red heart stark against the white envelope, and to say that Ai, confined to the duel disk during school hours, had a simple 'giggle fit' would have been a massive understatement. A human being would have hurt themselves by the second hour of vocalizations, but this was Ai -- his partner, the embodiment of darkness, and the unfortunate owner of a terrible sense of humor.

Yusaku had tried to mute him. Those locks had crumbled in milliseconds, owing to the ultra-adaptive nature of Ai's new programming. Dimly, Yusaku had considered throwing his duel disk in the garbage. Or buying earplugs. Both plans had too many problems. 

Written with looping, pink characters, the love letter had contained a date (today) and a time (8:00 P.M.), and although Ai had teased him about it for the rest of the day, bypassing the new set of locks with that same careless ease, Yusaku had decided to just ignore the letter. It had to be a mistake. 

In isolation, that conclusion was fine, but then the week had progressed.

Two.

On Wednesday morning, he had found the outside of his apartment building plastered with flyers for an 'After-School Duel Tournament, with Ultra Expensive Bonus Prizes!!! REGISTER NOW!! CALL-'. Although, contrary to the promise of ‘Ultra Expensive Bonus Prizes,’ the flyers had been printed on cheap paper, already disintegrating and sticking to the facade. The graphics were a blurry mess. 

After examining them for a beat, Yusaku had turned on his heel and continued to school. 

That incident was also the precursor to Thursday morning, the current moment.

Three.

Number three was staring directly at him with wide, unblinking eyes, and for someone who had created the card 'Linkuriboh,’ Ai shrieked in confusion and then stuttered out, "W-What is _that_??" at the sight of a Winged Kuriboh.

Standard, minus the fact that it was transparent and hovering less than thirty centimeters away, blocking Yusaku's path towards the main gates. 

"A holoprojector is malfunctioning somewhere," Yusaku said, the words stilted and disinterested even though he watched every bob and sway of the small Duel Monster, its green claws knitted together in a human-like gesture of worry. Most holoprojectors did not run such sophisticated software, the realism rivaling even that of virtual reality.

The transparent image was like a stray line of code in an otherwise efficient program, its meaning unclear, obscured. 

It pulled at him, and he watched as Ai, a pixelated purple-on-black blob, raised up as an avatar from his duel disk. The curiosity was visible, and -- not for the first time since he had found his partner's small, reforming consciousness and taken in the fragile data with a focus so strong that it had ached -- Yusaku felt a flicker of an emotion that he knew wasn't his own. Like a burst of static electricity branching up the back of his neck. 

Yes, Ai was curious, and Yusaku silently agreed. 

"Ah, the furball looks kinda lost," Ai drawled out, earning a warble from said 'furball'. "Pretty sure we'll get enough bad karma for ten lifetimes if we don't track down this poor puppy's master. Although, as an AI, human morality doesn't _necessarily_ apply to me, so…"

"Don't be lazy," Yusaku chided, even though he knew what Ai's strategy was -- act disarming, act casual. Pay attention to the syntax and symbols of the code itself. Analyze carefully. 

"Woooo!" was what the Winged Kuriboh chirped next, and it flapped its wings, bouncing a little. And of all the strange things that had happened in Yusaku's life, this encounter shouldn't have ranked in the top ten, and yet he was slowly taking a step back, assessing the near-empty streets and pathways that spread out around him. Overhead was an advertising blimp for a competing virtual world, elves in fantasy armor posing while the logo sparkled in purple and green. A new sign for a hotel was being installed with a crane. A food truck lingered by the bus stop, a thin stream of patrons in place, suspended in time. Again, there was the prickle over his skin, a sign of Ai. 

"Uhhhh… I think its vocalizer is broken," Ai commented when the Winged Kuriboh chirped again, with renewed vigor. No heads swiveled in their direction, and Yusaku, understanding more than before, stepped back, moving towards a line of trees that bracketed the familiar path. 

"The Kuriboh is here for us," he said, and, with those same wide, doll-like eyes, it bobbed after him, chirping over and over again. Ai, as usual, reacted with the subtlety of a confetti bomb inside a waiting room.

"H-Huh?! W-Ai-t a second," Ai demanded, spinning in place. "Hey, listen, you're cute and all, but I already have myself a charming, spherical sidekick. The position has been filled!"

"It's calling to someone," Yusaku stated, his voice clipped, and ducking behind a tree, he checked his surroundings again. Nothing stood out. A jogger passed with three panting huskies. More people continued idly down the sidewalk, filling the cityscape with small pockets of movement that, all together, were too much for him to monitor at once. "Ai, you-"

"I already got it, boss," Ai answered, quickly. The avatar flashed him a thumbs up, and the mechanical parts of the outdated duel disk had started to whine, a faint vibration trailing up his wrist. "Let's see… Grabbing a few security cameras here, borrowing a drone or two there, and… Incoming, at two o'clock! There's a guy approaching, and he's wearing a red-"

"Jacket," Yusaku finished, because suddenly it was a lot easier to parse through the possible candidates. Only one of them had two hands held up in the universal gesture of surrender, a wide, slanting grin above the tattered collar of his open jacket. The stranger stopped two meters away, that grin only widening when Yusaku stared back.

It felt like a challenge.

It felt like they were on a precipice, and the only question remaining was who would push first. Yusaku wanted it to be himself, for a reason that was so precious, so delicate. He needed the advantage. 

Ai had only recovered two months ago. 

Before that were the uncertain weeks and days and hours and seconds of trying to monitor that vast universe of his being, like staring at a splayed-out array of Ai's very cells and veins and bones and trying to understand how they all fit together, _hoping_ that the many, many gaps would knit themselves whole again. Talking to his therapist about it had been difficult, since he had to be vague for Ai's protection, and maybe he should have tried harder to get the words out. Watching Ai grow piece by piece had been both exhilarating and terrible, like two waves that lined up perfectly and canceled each other out, leaving only a pervasive, deep numbness inside of him. 

It was sudden, how he caught himself smiling at one of Ai's badly timed jokes on a late Saturday night, the words warbled out through his duel disk's speakers and laced with static. It was sudden how this almost-normalcy had set in, and Yusaku would not forget how easily it could all change, just like he would not forget how deeply he needed to protect Ai.

Therefore, anyone trying to find him -- the Origin, the person behind Playmaker and slowly becoming more and more threaded with iridescent parts of Ai -- had to be treated as a threat, a hunter. A dangerous outlier.

Because Winged Kuriboh had moved back, the edges of one angelic wing fell over the stranger’s face, dulling the intense amber of his eyes. They were slightly narrowed at the corners and beneath the shaggy fall of his long, brown bangs. 

"Why are you trying to find me?"

Immediately, Ai deflated, his avatar a lumpy pile of purple and black. "Okay, there's a difference between being direct and being _too_ direct, which I'm pretty sure we've talked about before. Still," he added with a lower tone, the duel disk whirling again, "that won't be a problem if Mr. Newcomer isn't the l-Ai-ing type…"

Yusaku watched what happened next with his complete focus, as the stranger glanced at Winged Kuriboh, shrugged, and then turned back to him with a lop-sided smile

"Actually, I'm hoping to be the roguish, charming hero in this story, although my entrance could've been better. Kuriboh here says that I startled you, and… Well, sorry about that. I totally get it, but...it also wasn't my intention…” Before Yusaku could respond, he continued. “I like your ‘old school’ style, by the way. The new duel disks don’t really grab me either.”

It was a detail that Yusaku had dimly registered -- a bulky, grey-blue duel disk, retracted and showing only blank displays. “You’re a duelist,” Yusaku heard himself say, an observation that earned him a chuckle from the person across from him and a small ‘hoot’ from Winged Kuriboh. Questions compounded. Outcomes changed.

“Yuki Judai, hero duelist at your service.” The statement was followed by a slight bow and another chuckle, ‘Judai’ running a hand over the crown of his head. “Hmm… Getting an AI-assistant into an old model like that must’ve been tough, although it doesn’t surprise me coming from a guy like you. Playmaker is known for his determination, isn’t he?”

There was no hesitation.

“You didn’t answer my first question,” Yusaku stated, his voice flat, empty and dead even though Ai’s energy had surged inside of his veins, sparking like miniature storms -- coiled clouds, thick pressure. Playmaker was pursued more often than he would like, usually by factions with their own self-serving interests, hoping to find a way to use him as a symbol, as a lighting rod to harness the public’s attention. And yet no one had approached him like Judai had -- out in the open, alone with only a deactivated duel disk and that spirit-like monster. In the distance, the first bell was ringing out, loud enough to travel over the rhythmic beats of the living city.

“...Not sure why I thought mentioning your secret identity would calm things down. In hindsight, that was a misplay,” Judai admitted, and when Winged Kuriboh chirped at him, Judai cringed. “Yeah, a total misplay. Look, I really didn’t want to try explaining all of this out in the open, but time isn’t being very friendly at the moment. ...You’re following me, aren’t you?”

“We’re standing still,” was Yusaku’s dry reply, and while Ai let out a series of tiny giggles, Judai sagged in place, his hands ending up on his knees. 

“...That’s...not quite the answer I was looking for, but...” With renewed vigor, Judai shot up again. “So, usually when I walk up to someone and say, ‘Hey, sorry to bother you, but there’s this evil force that’s trying to end the world and I probably need your help to solve it,’ I either get a puzzled look or totally ignored. Both make for pretty bad first impressions.”

“You could always try sending me another love letter,” was Yusaku’s even drier reply, and Judai’s face twitched. Of course, at the mention of the love letter, Ai was halfway through a set of extremely bad jokes, all of which Yusaku ignored. “There haven’t been any new threats to Link VRAINS. The other virtual worlds also appear to be stable.”

It was quick, how Judai’s eyes darkened, the copper-like colour veined with flecks of green-blue that scattered in seconds. “Oh, this is new,” he rasped, the angles of his face sharp, his smirk showing his canines. “Never had someone ask me to confirm _which_ world is in trouble. The easy answer is that all of them are, including the one we’re in right now. ...Aaaand there’s the puzzled look!”

“Hey, Yusaku-chan,” Ai stage-whispered at him, disc-like yellow eyes imploring, “maybe you should call school security. Pretty sure this guy’s in a cult, and not, like, one with cool uniforms or anything.”

Judai had opened his mouth, a finger raised for emphasis, but then there was a deep rumble from overhead, one that Yusaku could feel extending down to the soles of his feet and then burrowing into the concrete. With a crushing slowness -- as if the suspended image was so powerful that it had enthralled time itself, had overwritten the axioms of this reality -- the blimp was now falling out of the sky, its bright advertisement replaced with a single word in bold, black letters across the madly flickering screen.

CALAMITY. 

“Keep your head down. I’ll catch you later,” Judai said, the upbeat words accompanied by an expression that pierced through the chaos of the moment -- that cheerful smile morphing into a snarl as the duel disk at his side sparked to life. The determination in his eyes was undeniable, and Yusaku, shaking himself, recovered at the sound of Ai’s voice, a stunned yell as the blimp continued its downward trajectory, every millimeter accompanied by harsh screams from the people around them. Panic was thick in the air, strong enough to choke him as he opened a line to Kusanagi, as he-

As he whipped around and saw that Judai was _gone_.

“Yu-”

“Check RRA’s security, _now_ ,” Yusaku snapped out, and he couldn’t look at the display, not with the object above hurtling closer and closer, picking up speed. “Someone could have hacked the onboard systems for their advertising blimp over Den City. I’ll meet you at the plaza if I can.”

“If you- W-What?! Yusaku, _run_ . Get _out_ of there, and- And I got it. I’m working on RRA right now.”

“Right,” Yusaku said, and then he cut the line, his vision blurred at the edges. Ai was next. Rationally, logically, there were things they could accomplish, things he sorted through as he bolted away from the grey shadow and towards the school. Students should have been streaming out of it. And yet they weren’t, those in the courtyard staring mutely at the sight overhead. “Ai! Get the alarms.”

“Roger, roger!”

-and they were effective, Yusaku catching how the others snapped out of their dazes and ran. The roads bordering the school had become walls of jammed cars, and as he, cursing, skirted around a van with its emergency lights on, Ai was the constant voice in his ear, reporting that the blimp used a rudimentary AI (‘CloudSensor’) for weather reports, wind velocity, and scheduling routine maintenance. The controls were all manual, and someone had jammed them into the position for a catastrophe. 

Damn.

“There’s nothing Cloudy can do,” Ai said, the next rustle of static like a deep growl, and Yusaku, unthinking, put his palm over the domed top of the duel disk, as if the steady beat-beat-beat of his pulse would be enough to reach Ai’s self through the circuitry, through the patchwork of screws and wires that Yusaku had installed himself. And Yusaku, riveted in place while his mind worked and _worked_ , felt the world tilt when the blimp was suddenly hit on the underside by _something_ \-- the shape was unclear, the details impossible from this distance. The force of it made the blimp lurch backwards, higher.

Ai was a network of static over his skin, his body trembling with an emotion that he shared with someone else. “It’s okay,” he heard himself say, quiet and meaningless under the wail of sirens and continuing shouts. Or, it would have been meaningless to anyone else. Ai heard him. 

“Hey, Yusaku-chan, take some breaths. I’m watching everything for you, so… Just take some for me, please?”

He did, even though focusing on just _that_ was bizarre with that surreal sky over him, the blimp being forced _up_ more and more, a grey void hovering over the city spread below. “The AI, can it register if the onboard systems are functioning normally or not?”

“That doesn’t _sound_ like relaxing to me.”

“It’s difficult to relax with the airship still over me.”

“...True,” Ai admitted, the pout audible, and then he followed the order, his tone bright even as those prickles of electricity remained. “Cloudy says that the manual controls are still set to, err, the _bad_ option, so it must be something outside of the vehicle that’s making it move like that. I’m sorting through high-resolution camera feeds to try and get you a better look, but it’s...not going very well. Most of the cameras here are set to street-level only, and one of those government sweeper programs is grabbing all the _good_ feeds from me, so...”

“You’re doing great, Ai. Thank you.”

He had said it because it was true, and there was a silence between them. He would think about what it meant later. Much later.

Ai had wanted to respond. Yusaku knew that. He understood it, and yet-

“...Maybe let’s go get a hot dog though,” was what Ai muttered to him, and Yusaku, with a final, lasting look at the retreating shape above him, nodded before taking off at a sprint. 

\---

As of Thursday, Fujiki Yusaku's normal week at school could not possibly be normal again, not when the public viewing screens across the plaza were replaying the same grainy footage of the blimp dipping sharply, branded on its side by that single word: CALAMITY. The social media tracker across the bottom of the looping video showed that ‘extremist’ and ‘sky terror’ were trending, despite the lack of an official investigation.

There wouldn’t be one for awhile, considering that the blimp was currently being moved further into the grey clouds by a persistent, invisible hand, and when Yusaku, soaked in sweat, slammed open the staff door to Café Nagi, he was greeted by two startled Kusanagi brothers, the younger gaping at him while the elder stalked over and shoved a water bottle at him. 

“Is it on the house?” 

“Yes, on the promise that you only scare me a _quarter_ of the way to death the next time you call me,” Shouichi said, deadpan. Yusaku silently accepted the bottle and nodded. “Drink that, and then I’ll tell you all about RRA’s state-of-the-art cyber security. Seems like they took the new regulations pretty seriously.”

“You don’t have to dote over Yusaku-chan. That’s my job!” Ai protested, and Yusaku, working off the cap, hit the ‘mute’ icon. To no effect. “Also, I’d appreciate some free stuff too, as, like, a symbolic gesture of our cooperation and friendship and all that.”

Ai’s upgrades really were impressive. 

With the surfaces wiped down and stacks of Nagi take-away cups on the counters, the space was deeply familiar, and Yusaku took his usual seat without another word, his fingers flying over the keyboard. The national registry could be helpful, especially when cross-referenced with visitor data and citizen data gathered by Den City’s automated systems, and-

“Uhh… Need a hand there?” Shouichi asked.

“This is just the preliminary search. I’ll need your help to access overseas databases, if these don’t turn up anything useful.”

“Right. ‘Useful’ as is…?”

“I’m looking for a ‘Yuki Judai,’” he said as he tapped the ‘Enter’ key, and he cut down the flurry of results by estimated age range (18-23, most likely). Factors like hair and eye colours were too susceptible to change, and-

A steaming black coffee appeared by his elbow, and, with a shy smile, Jin moved back.

“You don’t seem very interested in the water.”

“...Thank you,” he said, and the cardboard sleeve was warm to the touch. 

“Wow. I wish you looked at _me_ like that,” Ai lamented, the duel disk buzzing slightly. “Guess I’ll have to dust off my SOLtiS body and download a lifetime’s worth of coffee tutorials, otherwise I’ll lose you to a cute barista.”

With a pointed flick of his fingers against the duel disk, Yusaku turned back to the task at hand. “I don’t know enough about the situation. If I involve either one of you too heavily in my search, it could cause problems for you later. I’m already imposing on you, Kusanagi-san, by using your equipment, although I plan on erasing my activity. All traces of it.”

Sitting next to him, Shouichi had his chin balanced on his knuckles, and his smile would have seemed condescending on someone else. “From my perspective, it seems like you should get this search over with as quickly as possible. Got any more info on this guy?”

“...He’s a hero duelist.”

“And, more _importantly_ ,” Ai cut in while Shouichi tapped out a few commands and let the results refresh, displaying only one, “he’s got some style. Not as much as myself, obviously, but the old-model duel disk _does_ have a certain appeal. Plus the red jacket. Red’s an eye-catching colour.”

Red was for Slifer Red, one of three class divisions at the prestigious dueling academies overseen by the one and only Kaiba Corporation.

Yuki Judai, age 20.

Graduated with below-average marks from two public schools before entering Duel Academia through the standard first-day dueling test. Maximum points for ‘dueling’ in every year, with a few reports on his uncanny ability attached to one of the available files. For deck composition, he relied on fusion and warrior-type monsters, and as of the day he graduated, he was difficult to track, enough to make Ghost Girl’s nickname lose its meaning.

No recorded tournament appearances. No employment records. No university applications. No recent medical records, and even those that Yusaku could pull up were empty, suspiciously so to someone who had _probably_ done too many computer crimes in his life. No social media accounts. No online presence. No personality profiles.

Faced with an _almost_ blank slate, Yusaku drained more of his coffee. Over the expanse, he could too easily imagine that expression from before -- bared teeth and flaring eyes, like twin fires. The impression was one of pure, absolute strength, similar to the metal-hard glint of Revolver’s glare from across a battlefield. 

The outlier remained just that, and he was still unpredictable. More so than before.

The information on his dueling history was the strongest. Judai had won a card-design contest hosted by Kaiba Corporation when he was a child, which, in hindsight, seemed like an excuse for the CEO to test out his new navigation AI in outer space. Such contests did not normally involve shooting the completed cards into space. 

“Ai, track him down,” Yusaku ordered, curt enough that the AI grumbled, and then he switched topics, clearing the search. “We should investigate the blimp incident next. Kusanagi-san, can you find the employee records for those who would have been operating it? According to the AI, only manual controls can be used for that model.”

“...That _sort_ of makes sense,” Shouichi mused as he entered command after command, Yusaku sorting through the incoming news on the blimp, currently drifting away from the city center. Police drones orbited it as flickers of red-blue. Jet-black helicopters had been launched from security facilities. “This advertising model is rarely used nowadays, and outfitting a custom AI for it would be more expensive than just training the necessary people. Those navigation AIs have extremely high security requirements, after all.”

“Right.”

“...The word is...alarming, to put it lightly.”

“The word?”

“Calamity,” Shouichi said, and something about his tone made Yusaku look over. Like his own, Shouichi’s sense of peace was only recent. “It puts a lot of ugly images into my mind. Before helium was widely available, hydrogen was sometimes used to inflate airships, and, well, an important difference between those gases is that only _one_ is highly flammable.” A pause, Shouichi letting a flurry of windows ‘ping’ open, displaying logs for the RRA’s employees. From behind him, Yusaku could hear Jin take a deep, shaking breath. “But that’s just a bad thought, the kind of thing that a big brother like myself should _know_ better than to say out loud.”

“You don’t have to...stay quiet around me,” Jin mumbled, and although he continued in a stronger voice, Yusaku was aware of how tightly he had gripped the back of the chair, white knuckles raised. “Those are drone clusters around the blimp, and...that means there has to be a better camera feed than this one.”

“Quick-thinking runs in the family,” Shouichi replied with a wry grin, and the list of employees was quickly cut down to just two, their names and IDs highlighted in red. 

“The risk is too high. The new units synchronize with the others in their cluster, meaning that we would have to hack into all of the drones at once to avoid detection,” Yusaku stated plainly, and he knew the protest was coming before Ai flipped the speakers on again. 

“For a _human_ , yes, but in case you forgot, you’re allied with the stupendous, the _marvellous_ , the most handsome and charming AI to ever-”

“I said it’s too high.”

“...Uh, hello? Stupendous? Marvellous? _Charming_? I totally got this, so-”

There would have been an argument if Yusaku had said anything back. Instead, along with Shouichi and the occasional quiet comment from Jin, he monitored every available channel, searching for valuable information within the torrent of data. Like himself, Shouichi knew when to be cautious. Shouichi knew when to weigh risk versus reward. 

The next official statement from Den City Security was a crucial piece of information -- task-force members had boarded the cabin and, with collaboration from the military, were now moving the blimp (technically a ‘dirigible’ because of its reinforced casing, one news commentator reported with the tired air of someone who had repeated the same fact many, many times) to a secure location, military aircraft dotting the cloudy sky like outline marks on a piece of paper. And while Yusaku did not decipher the chatter over the military’s secure communication lines, the fact that such chatter existed in the first place was a sign. A very bad one.

Outside, it had started to rain, hard drops pelting the pavement and forming a fine grain of motion over the food truck’s security cameras. By 2 A.M., Jin had dozed off on the desk, his arms and hoodie used as a makeshift pillow, and -- as the minutes continued to peel away, his fingers working over the keyboard and shuffling through more and more information -- Yusaku began to realize that, yes, he was afraid. 

As of 1:45 A.M., new information had been leaked to the press, and it had spread online like a virus through a weakened body.

The two employees who should have been inside the cockpit had been found trapped inside the company’s lounge, the electronic lock scrambled. With their phones in their lockers, they had been left there for hours, unnoticed because of the skeletal maintenance staff at the blimp’s mooring site. The blimp had launched with only one pilot, inhuman as it was. 

A SOLtiS with a featureless, white face.

The members of the task force had found it at the helm, locked in position with its hands directing the engines to reach maximum power and the balloon to sink rapidly. The detonator within its reach would have triggered the bombs attached to the bottom of the cabin.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

\---

Thunk.

Even with sleep dulling his eyes and filling the inside of his head, Yusaku could recognize the unique sound of a take-away cup hitting a hard surface, and Jin stepped back with a nervous smile, his dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail. The T-shirt he wore was an old one of Shouichi’s -- the Nagi logo on the front worn. 

“Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble,” Jin said, and then he looked at the duel disk, laughing a bit. “Hey, Ai, do you want one too?”

“It’s physically impossible for me to accept that offer,  _ but _ ,” Ai quickly added, his avatar suddenly bouncing up and spinning in place, “that offer is still so,  _ so  _ kind, Coffee Boy. Ah, maybe now I’m falling for your boyish, caffeine-flavoured appeal. Perhaps my intense look will even make Yusaku-chan jealous~”

Yusaku ignored that, and as he put the cup down, he took note of where Shouichi had ended up -- flopped over the driver’s seat, Jin’s hoodie spread over his chest like a too-small blanket. The piece of paper sitting on his terminal caught his eye next, the writing Jin’s. 

“I didn’t sleep very well, so Ai and I made a hacker-proof timeline,” Jin explained, and taking it, Yusaku almost smiled at the collision of Jin’s neat, small characters and Ai’s colourful phrasing. 

_ 6:50 A.M. -- RRA employees Nakamura and Amemiya have a serious problem with a door.  _

_ 8:03 A.M. (Ai-approved estimation) -- the technically-a-dirigible-and-not-a-blimp reaches Den City to annoy everyone trying to go to work slash school with its advertisements. _

_ 8:40 A.M. -- A Winged Kuriboh holoform decides to treat me and Yusaku-chan like a Lost and Found box.  _

_ 8:41 A.M. (plus 43 seconds and 587 milliseconds) -- I locate Yuki Judai, hero-duelist and proud owner of a weirdly clean government record. Spooky, right? _

_ 8:42 A.M. through 8:48 A.M. (didn’t feel like it took that long, but, hey, there’s a 0.00000001% chance of me being off here) -- We have a conversation that is absolutely normal and totally not strange in hindsight, especially the part where Judai mentions the world possibly ending and figuring out the true identity of a certain Maker of Plays. _

_ 8:48 A.M. (plus 23 seconds and 298 milliseconds) -- Cloudy reports several abnormal actions. The thrusters are set to full. Negative buoyancy is achieved. Approximately 4980 minor mechanical actions are taken (see your Ai-Assistant for more information). _

_ 8:48 A.M. (plus 27-28 seconds, Ai-approved estimation) -- Yuki Judai vanishes into thin air. _

After that was a paragraph, Ai switching between details on the blimp’s mechanical actions, as reported dutifully by its AI, and the military and security force’s response. Even before he read to the end, Yusaku knew that the situation must have had a positive conclusion, with the bombs dismantled and the experts recalled without injuries. Otherwise, Ai wouldn’t have used such a light tone, jokes thrown in next to dizzying relays of information. One detail in particular was stark to him now, as if Jin had written it in thick marker, dominating the surrounding wisps of blue pen.

When the task-force members had boarded the cabin, the wires from the detonator to the explosives had already been cut.

“It's...possible that whoever stopped the blimp from crashing went inside. They disconnected the explosives, despite the risk.”

When Jin took the seat that Shouichi normally did, it startled Yusaku outside of his daze, the flinch visible enough to make Ai warble in worry, a faint vibration passing up the back of his neck. 

“Ah, you really did work too hard, Yusaku-chan. Humans need sleep, more sleep than  _ three  _ hours.”

“I’m fine.”

“I can monitor you well enough to know  _ that’s  _ not true…”

“I’m not going to repeat myself,” he said, and after taking a steadying breath, he leaned back in his chair. “I take it you and Ai already came to that conclusion.”

“...Yes, but it...took us a little longer than that,” Jin admitted sheepishly, picking at his shirt collar. When Ai whirled on him next, berating him for ‘tattling to Yusaku-chan’, Jin laughed a little. It was a nice sound, reassuring. “From what Ai’s found out, there aren’t any new leads to follow. The military are still analyzing the components of the bombs. The investigation into RRA has just started. The current theory is that someone broke in, trapped the two pilots, and then launched the blimp with the modified SOLtiS onboard, modified in that it was operating independently from the network. Or...that the SOLtiS did it alone.”

“...Yeah, that other theory is  _ sure  _ going to do a lot for human-Ai relations,” Ai grumbled, and Yusaku knew that he was very tired, so tired that he was numb to what he felt underneath the thin, brittle relief at being here, in the Nagi food truck with both of the Kusanangi brothers in sight and Ai at his side, sparking on the edge of his senses. The relief was an ice over dark waters.

“There are three leads remaining.” Perking up, Jin stared at him, and Ai made the lights on the duel disk sparkle, curiosity flaring as reds and oranges. “Jin, I’m not going to involve you and your brother in anything more than just surface-level research. If you have the time for it, I would appreciate your help with the first two leads.”

Shouichi was the one who answered, throwing up a hand in a V-sign as he stumbled over to the terminal and, leaning over Jin, opened a new window. “Well, something tells me that this Friday morning will be very,  _ very  _ slow, maybe even so slow that I’ll have a bit of free time. Convenient, right?”

“Nii-san is usually right when it comes to predicting the rush,” Jin added, and Yusaku nodded at him. 

“The first lead is the word on the side of the blimp. Monitoring its search history and use online could reveal something, although it’s a longshot.”

“That would be in Ghost Girl’s wheelhouse,” Shouichi observed, and then he shrugged. “Because she owes me a favour for those free hotdogs last week, I can probably get you the results by this afternoon, maybe tomorrow morning if she feels like being stingy.”

“The second lead,” Yusaku said, frowning to himself, “is the more challenging one. We don’t know who is behind this, and therefore we also don’t know what their motivations are. I...don’t believe this is all the work of a rogue SOLtiS.”

“Plus, it’s very, very  _ convenient  _ for a bunch of humans if a SOLtiS is the only suspect.”

“Yes. But what we  _ do  _ know are the time and location that the SOLtiS directed the blimp downwards. That is another belief I have -- that these two features are not random. Therefore, it should be possible to isolate where the blimp would have fallen.”

“...Makes sense,” was Shouichi’s reply. “I’ll get working on the city map once I’ve had some coffee. Chances are that someone else has already started on this angle. Maybe I can, ah, ‘borrow’ some of their work.”

“Is ‘borrow’ slang for ‘commit computer crimes’?” Jin asked, reaching up to ‘bonk’ his brother on the chin. 

The third lead was one Yusaku had left unsaid, even though it was obvious. The name was inside of his head, twisting his thoughts until none of them made sense at all. His logical arguments had become tangled, and, stepping out of the van in his creased school uniform at 6:53 A.M. on a Friday, Yusaku understood the task in front of him now, difficult as it might be.

Luckily enough, he had a talented partner.

“Ai.”

“Ready when you are.”

He breathed in, and then it was time. 

“Let’s go.”

\---

With Ai, he went home. 

For the sake of productivity (Ai’s, since his partner wouldn’t change topics otherwise), Yusaku forced himself to chomp through two slices of bread, although he did so while executing search after search on his laptop. Ai, embedded in the customized hardware, was embodied by the purrs and hums of many, many cooling fans and whirling components. 

Out of necessity, Yusaku’s own equipment had stronger protections on it than Shouichi’s own. Sometimes there were anti-technology radicals to investigate. Sometimes doing so required him to delve into databases that were the equivalents of steel traps, waiting for just the slightest pressure before they would snap shut. 

He hated making those decisions, necessary as they were.

Predictably, his new searches for information on Yuki Judai were just as frustrating at the first ones. Nothing. The impression of a ghost. A taunting series of blank spaces.

“We need to regroup.”

“Ah, and yet what  _ you  _ need,” rasped out a low, gravely voice as gentle fingers traced a path up the back of his neck, “is to spend some time in bed with me as your very, very eager masseur.”

Fujiki Yusaku was not prone to stuttering.

He almost did after spinning in his desk chair and finding himself with an Ai-model SOLtiS in his lap, a pair of his old jogging pants spread tightly across the thighs that were sliding next to his own. Ai had not elected to steal a shirt, and the fact that Yusaku was staring far, far too hard at the dips and ripples of absolutely-one-hundred-percent-Ai-customized muscles under that expanse of smooth, artificial skin could be blamed on his lack of sleep. Probably.

Because of how it fell in loose waves, a significant portion of Ai’s hair ended up sliding over Yusaku’s face, some of it getting in his eyes and most of it tickling him, a lot. It was a convenient distraction from the slight rumble of the machinery inside Ai’s chest, like the beat of a frantic heart over his own, the many vibrations reaching into him and making that faint streak of heat-

No.

In hindsight, climbing out of his desk chair and jump-running across the room made for an inelegant retreat.

The SOLtiS should have been in a storage closet and dressed in the set of purple-black pajamas that Ai had fallen for, apparently because of the heart-shaped buttons. Yusaku had drawn the line at letting the deactivated SOLtiS sleep on the sofa upstairs like an eerily silent and motionless houseguest.

“When did you make...alterations?” Yusaku heard himself ask in a completely flat voice, and he watched the coiled shapes and rigid peaks of Ai’s back shift as he rose, those multi-coloured curls thrown back when he jerked his chin up. The smirk was pleased. 

Yusaku suspected that Ai had systematically chosen the most devastating shade of gold for his irises. Under long, curving eyelashes, their effect was strong.

Maybe he did need to get more sleep, although Yusaku would have  _ preferred  _ if Ai had won the argument in a different way.

“Hmm… I’ll have you know that I’m a master of multitasking,” Ai drawled out with a raised eyebrow. The wink that followed made Yusaku flinch. “Sometimes when you’re in your little ‘Yusaku bubble’ -- ignoring the outside world and, more importantly,  _ me _ \-- I’ll order some parts off those totally-not-sketchy cryptocurrency-only websites or tell the mail-carrying drone to drop off the new packages in the foyer for me. Trust me when I say all of this is completely untraceable, and, unless someone has managed to clone me, no sentient lifeform in this galaxy can piece together what I’m doing with a bunch of half-priced junk.”

The gestures Ai did fit him perfectly, all fluid and natural. Running a hand down his neck, he briefly stroked the teal diamond in the hollow of his throat. It was a brand. The red border Ai had added to it marked him as an exclusive prototype, capable of bypassing many of the recent laws containing the movement and activities of Ai-controlled machines. 

Focusing on it, Yusaku collected himself. 

Sort of.

Enough to continue on without feeling like he could actually cross those familiar, wooden floorboards and change everything, using touch to confess because the words were so difficult. 

“Ai, someone could still be suspicious of what you’re ordering. I…” It was too much. He changed his approach. “I’ll pick that up later. For now, we need to find Yuki Judai. He’s an important variable.”

On bare feet, Ai walked towards him, and then, with a single, unbroken movement, Ai pressed his forehead against Yusaku’s shoulder, as if the power had been cut from the SOLtiS -- forcing it to tip forward, to use him for support. Without thinking, Yusaku had grabbed Ai’s arms to brace himself, and beneath the layer of synthetic skin, there were the curving, entwined fibers of what felt like metal. The contact was warm. When his grip loosened, Ai lolled his head to the side and chuckled against Yusaku’s neck. It did not improve his failing concentration.

“Hmm… I’m working on that in the background.” Another chuckle, followed by a faint mechanical hum. “Like I said, master of multitasking, although my processors might crash if your hands decide to go lower and test out my  _ newest  _ improvements.”

Clicking his tongue, Yusaku answered with, “If...I agree to take a shower and drink something non-caffeinated, will you let me continue working for the rest of the day?”

“The day ends at 5 P.M., so don’t forget that~” Ai chirped back, and then he bounced away, all smiles and perfectly symmetrical dimples. And here, against the plain, crumbling backdrop of the patched-over wall, the modified SOLtiS looked so  _ Ai _ , every feature suiting his personality -- the impish angle of his expression, the slight way that his eyes would narrow at the corners. Every angle of the SOLtiS must have been mulled over thousands or millions of times, incomprehensible algorithms created just for that purpose, just so Ai could express himself in this dimension. His partner would fixate on the minute details, like the black nail polish on his short nails. Like the iridescent sheen of the ink-dark strands that were pushed behind his ears.

Ai was the architect of his own image, much like how Yusaku had created Playmaker for himself. The representations of themselves revealed many things, and of course Yusaku loved what he saw of Ai.

Of course he did.

\---

After a utilitarian shower and a glass of juice that he had barely tasted, Yusaku was faced with a sheepishly grinning Ai perched on the edge of his bed. The addition of one of Yusaku’s too-big hoodies was helpful.

Sort of.

“Okay, so this should’ve been the part where I say, ‘Guess which dashing AI has located our fugitive with his undeniable brilliance?’, buuuuut I sort of…..haven’t….got his location yet, soooo….”

“We can work on a new strategy together.”

“Oooh! I’ll take notes,” Ai blurted out and, with a flurry of arms and legs, produced one of Yusaku’s notebooks and a fuzzy pink-purple pen that Yusaku had never seen in his room before. It light up when Ai scrawled their names across the paper. "Look, I've figured out my own Ai-exclusive writing style."

The characters were large, rounded, and surrounded by small hearts and Ai-shaped doodles, and, after giving a quick nod, Yusaku knew that he was smiling.

Although, that expression couldn't last through the 9 minutes, 45 seconds, and 803 milliseconds (an Ai-approved estimation, of course) that it took them to make a breakthrough in their search. While Ai had pulled footage of their conversation outside the school, none of the camera angles caught what happened after Judai suddenly bolted to the left. Notably, he did not reappear on the opposite side of the street. 

"While the new regulations on facial technology have made it, errr,  _ challenging  _ to poke around the city center," Ai explained, waving his hands as he went, "I can determine with 99% confidence that Hero Man didn't return there after the whole 'averted catastrophe' thing. 'Course, that's the current problem -- I can't find anything on where he turned up next!"

Ai had written 'GHOST BOY??' as their first bullet point. The accompanying sketch was, of course, a floating Ai in Ignis form. 

While Ai had timed the breakthrough at roughly 10 minutes into their conversation -- which had eaten through four pieces of notebook paper and made Yusaku wish for something with caffeine and sugar -- it had actually occurred much earlier than that. Only, Yusaku had found himself stunned by how  _ simple  _ the idea was. It was a search he could easily have carried out with a standard-issue cellphone and exclusively public sources. 

Maybe he had been cynical to expect the worst from Judai -- pulling up criminal databases and wanted lists the moment he was at his own computer, parsing through records indicative of violence, of the creations of his own nightmares.

And, still under that sense of disbelief, he had opened a browser, typed the keywords into the basic search engine, and then narrowed the results by time. Given Judai's reaction to the 'love letter,' he had likely been in Den City since Wednesday, maybe even a few days earlier. 

And  _ maybe  _ some duelist had run into Judai, lost to his set of hero monsters, and then done what, in Yusaku's opinion, rarely reflected well on a duelist of any caliber. Maybe someone had made a forum post complaining about, for example, how a Neo-Spacian fusion had overpowered effects or that hero decks relied on pure luck, making them frustrating to play against.

“Ohoho…. That’s a good angle,” Ai purred, leaning over the back of his chair, and Yusaku clicked on the top result, a forum post to ‘DEN DUELIST PROS’ with the promising subject of ‘The fuck is a neo spacian grand mole????’.

“How didn’t I think of this earlier?” Yusaku muttered to himself, scrolling down the wall of text from HollyAngel05, who used the sort of crass style that Aoi herself would have called ‘boring’. “The Neo-Spacian cards are rare because they’re out of print. Plus, running into a duelist who only uses fusion in Den City would be surprising to many duelists.”

“Seems like Holly-chan isn’t the  _ only  _ one to find themselves KO-ed by our new friend,” Ai observed. From the replies, at least three other duelists using the forum had reported losing to, quote, ‘out-of-date hero monsters’. The incidents all seems to be recent.

And all of the posters frequented the same makeshift dueling arena, located on the outskirts of the industrial district and wreathed by a mixture of crumbling towers and under-construction lofts, currently rising from the dirt ground as rigid sets of grey supports. Unlike the city core, security cameras were seldom used for public roads. 

There were too many blind spots.

“So, if we’re going in for some reconnaissance work, it might be useful to have two sets of hands, and-”

“No,” Yusaku said without turning around, and Ai slumped down with a defeated sigh, his wrists crossed over Yusaku’s chest. “Even with your prototype marker, the chance of someone stopping us is far too high. I’m...not going to let that happen.”

A slight pause, and then Ai’s fingers passed slowly up his arms, Ai’s voice a murmur against his ear. “Ah, there you go, saying things that make all of my systems malfunction. But, to be perfectly honest, I’m not going to complain about my SOLtiS being your personal indoors-only mechanical companion. I promise to serve you well with it. Very,  _ very  _ well.”

Rolling his eyes, Yusaku shoved Ai's arms away, stood up, and grabbed his duel disk. "I could always use help with the dishes."

"... That's...not... _ quite  _ what I had in mind."

\---

His investigations were normally carried in the vibrant universe of the new Link VRAINS -- glittering spires rising over the central hubs with duelists fluttering about their peaks as streaks of colour and energy. Sometimes they were in the warm, familiar back of the Nagi food truck or within the chipped-away corners of his apartment, which had stopped feeling so empty since Ai had returned.

Moving down the winding streets, he kept his hood up and his shoulders slouched, his own glances at the surroundings quick. He knew where the cameras were, and, driven by an ever-present caution, he dodged them as well as he could, Ai chatting away in a low static. Overhead were drooping powerlines, forming a cage over the grey sky. Flyers littered the narrow sidewalks, those plastered to abandoned buildings peeling with age. The few open stalls bordering the duel area acted as hubs for card traders, and because the Duel Academia records had shown frequent changes to Judai’s deck composition, Yusaku approached one shopfront with a careful look at the other patrons. Other highschool students, mostly. Classes would resume on Monday, a response to the incident that had shaken the city, and it made sense that many people would want to lose themselves in the pushes and pulls of competition.

When Yusaku stopped in front of the grinning employee, the shelves behind her glittering from how the sunlight fell on the many sleeved cards and new booster packs, he very quickly realized that he could have decided on a better opening line. Being direct  _ could  _ work.

Although Ai would tease him about it. A lot.

“Has anyone traded for Elemental Heroes or Neo Spacians recently?”

The little vibrations of the duel disk against his wrist were the equivalent of giggles, and the employee rocked back on her heels, drumming her black fingernails on the glass-topped counter.

“Hmmm, let’s see… There’ve been a lot of questions about those archetypes,  _ but  _ it’s mostly from guys like you, which means that I have a question in return.”

“...A question?”

Flickering her green-on-blue bangs away next, she smirked. “How many turns did you last against this hero duelist? The record is set at three.” When he paused, considering his options while Ai only ‘giggled’ harder, she quickly continued. “Oh, that bad, huh? Ah, don’t beat yourself up over it. I’m sure his lucky streak will stop sooner or later.”

“I haven’t dueled him yet. I wanted to ask him about a card he showed me.”

“A hero, right?”

“No,” Yusaku said. Her too-calm demeanor reminded him of Ghost Girl -- a hacker who always knew more than she let on. Perhaps it was a flimsy justification for his approach, but- “He has a Winged Kuriboh card. It’s not popular and…” The next words came to him quickly, so quickly that he stumbled over them while he raised his arm, the employee arching her penciled eyebrows. “I like using older monster cards, and if I could use that card effectively in my own deck, I would. Maybe he knows how I can incorporate it.”

The next pause was from her, and the first sound after it was another click-click-click of her nails against the counter. Foiled rares were below the glass. Someone had stuck a heart-shaped sticker of Playmaker to the far corner, his avatar squinting while raising one gloved hand. 

“Your deck, huh? Mind showing it to me?”

The dummy deck, as usual, was the one in the duel disk, his Cyberse cards in a box attached to his belt and hidden by the fall of his hoodie. He gave over the spare without a second thought.

“Oh, when you said ‘older’ cards, you weren’t kidding,” she said with a note of surprise, shuffling past normal monsters and spell and trap cards with portraits streaked with age, some of the corners creased. “Shame the condition isn’t better. The value won’t go up on many of these.”

“I’m not going to sell them.”

“Yeah, I figured,” was the observation, and when she handed the deck back, Yusaku had expected for her to turn him away. It was the most likely outcome, and yet- “Do you see that building over there? That eyesore is called the ‘Bayview Towers’, and it’s set to finish in, oh,  _ never  _ if the developers don’t stop arguing with each other. A regular said that he saw the hero guy  _ climbing  _ the side of it yesterday, which… It’s a dumb rumor, and yet it suits a bright-eyed kid like you, doesn’t it?”

“‘Kid’ was a bit  _ much _ ,” Ai blurted out once they were out of earshot, the words ending in a burst of static. “Like, she looked...four years older than you? Maybe? That’s not enough for  _ kid _ .”

Yusaku ignored it.

Which only made Ai try harder.

“The thing with the Kuriboh card was quite the bluff. Perhaps my Ai-approved techniques are, ah, rubbing off on you. So to speak.”

“Winged Kuriboh isn’t widely played. For someone to have a...likeness of that card around them suggests that they have some kind of connection to it, which means they would probably have a copy of it. Still,” he admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets while the streets continued to move around him -- shopkeepers calling out to regulars while young children kicked a soccer ball in an empty lot -- “I took a chance on the information seeming unique enough for the shopkeeper to trade with us.”

“Hmmm… Seems like she bought it. Guess that gives her some info if she ever goes up against Mr. Tall, Dark, and Mysterious.”

“Right, or perhaps… It doesn’t matter. We should focus,” he concluded, shaking his head. Above, the incomplete tower rose, dividing the skyline despite its many empty spaces. Stark yellow-black construction equipment was frozen around the base, and cranes remained suspended over the highest floors -- only ten currently. “Ai, keep an eye on our surroundings.”

“Oh, are we breaking and entering?” Ai exclaimed. The duel disk vibrated. “Oh, hey, this is a great time for me to mention the handy-dandy high-tech additions I’ve made to the duel disk! Look, under this panel, there’s a pocket-sized taser, just in case any bad guys show up and want a taste of my M-Ai-ght, and I’ve also-”

“A taser?”

Ai blinked up at him. “Uh, yeah? For the bad guys? Like, currently  _ theoretical  _ bad guys.”

“You have...interesting hobbies.”

“I am  _ so  _ taking that as a compliment.”

Yusaku, staring blankly at the neat line of chain link fence circling the construction site, found himself with a question for his AI partner. There must have been problems with trespassers before -- considering the barbed wire at the top and the many, many ‘DO NOT ENTER’ signs.

“Did you also make a bolt cutter for me?”

“....Err.  _ No _ , not  _ yet _ . Of course, I am open to requests, even if they are a bit...inelegant.”

“You’re in charge of the design,” Yusaku responded, stepping back as he surveyed the fence again. “It can look as elegant as you want it to.”

“Ohohoh. Well, when you put it  _ that  _ way-”

“Nevermind.”

“ _ What _ ?!” Ai exclaimed, and if Yusaku had looked down, he probably would’ve been greeted with a hands-on-his-hips pose of disapproval. But he didn’t take his eyes off what seemed like an illusion at first, a patch where the pattern of the fence stopped. "Ah, I feel like an artist whose just had his easel taken away… I'll need a new project to channel my energy into!"

"You should be channeling your energy into observation," Yusaku said, dropping to a crouch and pushing aside the piece of loose fence, "because I've found our way in."

\---

Everything about the setting suggested motion. Paths had been trampled into the dirt by heavy boots. Tire treads made elongated shapes through the organized chaos of the building site. Small containers for makeshift offices stood at right angles with each other, their formation ending with a rigid line of portable toilets. It was easy to imagine the construction team suddenly returning to work. Too easy, and, moving quickly, Yusaku passed through an open section in the wall. 

In its current state, the ground floor resembled a sketch, the grey pillars done in pencil. Other had contributed to the image. Spray-painted words and symbols marked the far wall. Some flares of colour extended up to the ceiling, patches of it open to the next floor. 

The silence annoyed him. It itched.

Ai, now an eye over the duel disk’s display, blinked up at him. 

“Hey, Yusaku-chan? Why would a bunch of humans break into this dump?”

Taking long strides, he passed by a collection of crushed drink cans and balled-up plastic wrappers. Initials had been carved into planks of temporary scaffolding. “You seemed excited to come here. Can you explain why that was?”

“Yeah, ‘course I can.”

“You sure about that?”

Scoffing, Ai continued. “Hey, hey. Don’t underestimate me. It’s really simple from my perspective, since it’s you and me on an adventure. ...Although the whole, ah, someone-dropping-an-airship-on-a-populated-city-using-a-SOLtiS thing is a bit…”

“A bit what?”

“...Your language has so many restrictions,” Ai grumbled next. Yusaku stopped at where the unfinished staircase jutted up from the concrete floor. 

“The incident bothers me too, but it shouldn’t change our hope for the people around us.”

Ai would have responded, a reaction that he could sense. It was cut off when they found the drops of red at the base of the stairs. Paint was possible, considering the setting, and even if it was blood, it could have belonged to someone else. Maybe it meant nothing. 

Or maybe not.

“There’s more on the higher steps,” he said, the dots bold against the plain white. The next floor appeared as a maze of grey and black shapes, and the silence around them was not broken. And yet it was  _ different _ , like a static not yet loud enough to register. Like the pulse of  _ something  _ gathering in this place of stillness, of a world frozen.

They were not alone.

Across the smooth grey of the vast space, the drops of blood continued in their staggered pattern, and, dropping his arms to his sides, Yusaku stopped with the staircase at his back. Only a few of the interior walls had been put up, metal columns dividing the wide gaps between them, and when a shadow moved -- dark as it was splayed over the floor, like liquid spilling and then snapping into impossibly stiff angles and spikes -- Yusaku moved Ai behind his back. 

“H-Hey, what are you-?!”

“Complain later,” he muttered, and then that shadow was  _ gone _ , replaced by the unmistakable thunk-thunk-thunk of someone with heavy boots walking towards them. Even steps. The next shadow was one Yusaku would dare to call ‘human’. 

The wire of tension in his shoulders did not loosen, not even when Judai passed through a shaft of light -- clouded by motes of dusk but strong enough to catch the expression of his face. It was like Yusaku’s own when he stayed awake for two days working on a program, slipping out of time as lines of code trailed endlessly across his too-bright screen. Only, Yusaku had never managed to get a bruise like that from passing out at his desk. It crept over Judai’s jawline, edged with purple and blotted grey.

“Huh. A lot of Playmaker fans are going to be disappointed that you’re not online. Guess this is my fault for saying a bunch of cryptic stuff and then pulling a disappearing act,” was Judai’s greeting, and he stopped less than a meter away, one hand over the back of his neck. Dirt marred his grey shirt, the jacket open, and it was difficult to picture that intense, burning focus from when the blimp had first plummeted on this person, whose smile almost seemed...nervous. On guard.

“It got my attention,” Yusaku said slowly, and he dropped his arm completely, Ai letting out a warble of static. Like the chirp of a startled bird. 

“Well, next time I want to meet up with you, I’ll skip the love letters and go right to the world-ending conspiracies,” Judai stated with a hollow laugh, and, turning on his heel, he walked back towards the center of the room. “The most I can offer is room-temperature iced tea and kind-of stale chips, but, hey, it’s something.”

Ai snorted. “Not like you’re going to judge, right? Oh, what I’ve seen lurking in your cupboards… The horrors of the expired ready-meals…” 

“I will delete you,” he answered, and when the Ai crackled in annoyance, Judai laughed a little.

“I had no idea those dueling assistants could argue. The ones I’ve heard always sound like GPS systems. You know the voice, right? Turn left at 500 meters. Activate the trap card on your left.”

“They’re popular in Den City,” Yusaku stated. Although, in hindsight, the rogue hero duelist would have already known that.

Behind the partition of the incomplete wall was a small campsite. Inside the open bag was the unmistakable shape of a bulky, old-model laptop, and Yusaku made a mental note of that, a likely source of more information on the specter who was now sitting on a folded-up blanket and gesturing at the lawn chair across from it. The tag declared it the property of a construction company. He also made a note of the first aid kit within Judai’s reach, the top unclasped and supplies spread haphazardly over it. 

In his old school ID photos, Yuki Judai had given the camera a toothy grin and thrown up a victory sign. Except for the final year, his features leaner than before and his stare distant. 

And this person was someone else still, now tilting his head back with a sliver of green hanging in one of his bright eyes.

“So, Playmaker, have you ever heard of the Light of Destruction?” 

“The Light of…”

Ai’s audio feed cut out, and Yusaku did not flinch. He did not react while Judai was watching him, that odd cut of green still parting the brown-gold of his left eye. 

“I don’t know what that is,” Yusaku replied, his voice dead, and Ai had left the display, leaving it blank. He would understand why seconds later, as Judai replied in that effortless, rambling way while his eyes remained unchanged. For Ai, the tangled connections between the words ‘light’ and ‘destruction’ would have revealed themselves immediately, and those connections would have lead back into the past, into the fall of Cyberse World and the golden Ignis.

“As the name implies, it’s a force that seeks only the end of all life that opposes it in this universe. When the light reaches earth from outer space, it twists whatever it comes into contact with. People. Animals. Even objects like our cards can become hosts.” Judai leaned back, cross-legged on the blanket. The movement drew new shadows across his face. “In this galactic war, what opposes the light is the darkness. Darkness wants to create life, nurture it, and protect it. ...I know how all of this sounds, by the way,” Judai quickly added, flashing him a knowing smile. “Like a plot out of a sci-fi movie, right?”

No.

No, it sounded a lot like the story of the Ignis, only-

Only Yusaku could deal with those thoughts  _ later _ . For Ai’s sake.

“What is the source of this light?”

“A ‘white hole’ somewhere very, very,  _ very _ far away. I really can’t explain it any better than that because, well, it’s not like  _ I  _ understand how outer space works.” Shrugging, Judai continued. “The main takeaway here is that when the light takes on new hosts, a lot of people are put in danger. For example, there was an incident involving a satellite that could have...leveled cities. Burned forests to the ground. ...You get the idea. Super-villain stuff.”

A burst of wind rattled through the unfinished spaces, the suggestions of new rooms. With his palm over the display, Yusaku considered his next question. It suddenly became a statement. “The light is in Den City. That’s why you’re here.”

When Judai chuckled, it was hollow and strange, a cold spreading down Yusaku’s spine. The intensity of it could not be denied, even though he wanted to. 

The noise sounded like it had come from someone else, even though the only shadows here were their own -- thrown over the floor like discarded puzzle pieces, and Yusaku had no idea what image would form when they finally fit together. Judai could really be a hero duelist with a mission of justice. Or-

Or not. 

“You know, a person’s dueling style reveals a lot, even in virtual reality,” Judai drawled out next, angling his head to the side. “You’re quick, determined, and… Well, you clearly love those Cyberse cards. Anyone should be able to see  _ that _ .” And again that cold returned, like a warning rooted in instinct and inseparable from his sinews and blood and bones. The green was brighter. “You’re also right, of course. A lot of people are interested in monitoring the Light of Destruction, and while the light released from the white hole hasn’t come anywhere close to Den City, apparently there’s a  _ lot  _ of suspicious readings for this area. One theory is that there’s a new host hiding in Den City, and what happened yesterday can’t be a coincidence.”

“If they caused the incident, then they aren’t hiding anymore.”

With another dark chuckle, Judai put his hands on his knees and then stood up. “See, I had a feeling all of us would get along, which means that this is the part where I ask you to join me as an envoy of darkness.”

“No.”

Unphased, Judai’s expression never changed -- a grin that showed his long canines. “Oooh, rejection. That’s going to sting. Still, it’d be nice if you could do one favor for me, since you’re here anyways.”

“What is it?”

Yusaku tried to predict the answer, a wariness making his fingers clench over the surface of the duel disk, and a small spark of sensation -- a small bit of  _ Ai _ \-- reached him like a zap of static electricity. By no means was he foolish enough to trust Yuki Judai, even though the story he had told fit too neatly into the world as Yusaku understood it. Light opposing darkness. Notions of creation and destruction. A conflict between them.

Of all the possibilities, the most likely was that Judai would challenge him to a duel, their partnership part of Judai’s win condition. Even as a student, Judai had defeated members of the professional league, and the persistence of the rumors about him only confirmed that his strength was genuine. 

Strength was visible in his stare now, and after a blink, the curl of emerald green vanished. With a wider grin than before, Judai reached down and lifted up his shirt, revealing the network of bandages layered over his right side, dried blood edging them like scraps of rust. 

“Mind getting me some pain killers?”

\---


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which the chapter comes to a very self-indulgent ending after a lot of confusion.

\---

Outside, the weather was the same dismal grey as before, the clouds thin like ragged pieces of cloth, and Yusaku walked three blocks from the shell of a tower before stopping and holding out his duel disk. The words caught in his throat for a moment. 

“Ai, you’re okay.”

Purple pixels floated across the display. “All of my systems are functioning according to my own extremely high standards, so some would say I’m doing better than ‘okay’. ‘Superb’ would be more accurate.”

“...Ai.”

No avatar formed. The purple continued to trailed across, the pathways of it seemingly random. “Naturally, as an expression of my genius, I’ve already recorded and coded that conversation with our local vigilante. He’s been pretty consistent so far, and-”

“We can go home after I’ve brought him the medication. If you’re thinking about Lightning, I understand why, and...I’m here for you."

At first, Ai did not respond, and Yusaku passed into a small pharmacy, the window covered in advertisements for weekly sales. The front on one package promised ‘high-strength pain relief’. The attendant, smiling as she took his change, explained that the maximum daily dosage was six and that he should take them with water.

“They’re not for me."

“Oh! Well, the same rules apply,” she added with a slight nod. “Sometimes people experience nausea. Taking the pills after a small meal should help with that.”

Ai finally responded while Yusaku, now with a bag of convenience-store instant meals and two bottles of water, acknowledged that his Friday was turning out to be very, very strange. And relatively expensive. 

Ai had set the volume to low, barely loud enough to carry above the steady thrum of passing cars. 

"...Hey, I'm not malfunctioning. I can hold my own, so…" A straggled noise, as if Ai was clearing his throat. "This morning was supposed to be about me watching over you. We should stick to that script, otherwise the audience will get confused. That's bad for ratings."

"Ai…"

"Look, it's…" Another torrent of static, and then Ai was speaking faster than before, out of time with the fall of Yusaku's steps. "For the next couple of minutes, just pretend that I’m your assistant AI, like a sassier and saucier version of those mass-produced models. Like, I can even adjust my speech patterns, as if I  _ actually  _ rely on outdated generating functions to form even the simplest sentences."

Not for the first time, Yusaku glared at the plastic bag. They should be home. 

"It's not necessary to act like someone else.”

"Yeah, but it might be fun. I can even announce the hour like Shima's AI does! Because, yeah, that's  _ definitely  _ not annoying during class or anything like that."

“We'll get through this, and then we'll go home,” Yusaku said, and ducking into the construction site for a second time, he made for the tower's entrance, moving quickly. 

"...You say that when we both know a trip home involves a stop at Café Nagi. Oh, plus an eighty-five percent probability of you passing out on a hotdog-encrusted keyboard for a  _ second  _ night in a row."

"No. We're going home."

"Like I said, eighty-five percent."

By the time they reached the second floor, Ai had adjusted his prediction to a cynical eighty-seven percent, some high-pitched laughter thrown in for effect. In this place of tall ceilings and vast stretches of nothing, his own steps echoed. 

Cross-legged on the blanket with his head tilted back, Judai was waiting for him, and when Yusaku held out the bag, Judai took it with a smirk. “So, did you change your mind about joining forces with me?”

“No,” Yusaku replied, and he had started to turn away. Ai stopped him, the wrist guard for the duel disk tightening slightly. The plastic crinkled as Judai dug into the bag, although Yusaku wasn’t looking at him, not when the display flashed with small, blurred letters. The message was simple --  _ ‘WAIT!!!!’ _ .

“No offense, Hero Guy,” was the sharp chirp from Ai, “but my calculations show that there’s  _ zero  _ point in listening to your stories. Although, some  _ proof  _ might lead to a different result. That is, if you have any.”

“I was hoping my charming personality would be enough,” Judai replied, and, after a final, lasting look at the display, Yusaku glanced over at the injured duelist. He watched as Judai methodically popped three pills out of the blister pack. “I’m here because I know a guy who is, ah,  _ involved _ in the Ultraviolet Project. It’s one of those monitoring agencies I was telling you about. They’ll get back to you if you send them a message.”

“The Ultraviolet Project, comprised of fifty-nine specialists from seven countries and funded exclusively by the Kagemaru Group. Responsible for academic publications on electromagnetic radiation, loop quantum gravity, the Schwarzschild metric, and...a bunch of other stuff that I’m too lazy to list right now,” Ai muttered, making Judai laugh as he raised his hand, the pills rolling with the motion.

“You should take them with water,” Yusaku said.

With raised eyebrows, Judai met his stare. “Oh, is that a hint of concern I’m hearing?” Although, Judai did reach over, untwist the cap off a bottle with one hand, and take a drink, Ai using the gap in the conversation to relay another silent message. This one was longer than before -- ‘ _ SERIOUSLY WEIRD ORGANIZATION, BTW. BUT…. THEY ARE DOING ACTUAL RESEARCH… THEY COULD BE LEGIT.... I SENT A MESSAGE, SO….???’ _ .

Yusaku waited until Judai had finished. “Suppose that I believe in the existence of the Light of Destruction. That doesn’t explain why you need my help.”

Again, green scattered over the brown of Judai’s left iris -- the patch of colour small, imperceptible to someone who wasn’t waiting for it to appear. It would have seemed like an odd patch of shadow. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

“Vigilantes like the two of us usually end up working outside the system for a reason. Case in point, the people researching the Light of Destruction usually have a hard time convincing those in charge to take its threat seriously, which is why a couple of heroes are needed. Not to, ah, insult the officials of your home city, but I doubt they’ll start asking for help until a lot of people here have been converted. ...I haven’t gone into detail on that part yet. Chances are, the light will spread unless we can contain it, which is...not good. Kinda horrible, actually.”

Yusaku frowned. “You’re only asking me to join you because of Playmaker’s reputation.”

Not that he understood how Judai had connected him to Playmaker. Yet.

“...That’s, like, a  _ tenth  _ of it,” Judai said, and he began popping out more pills, two more falling into his palm. “When I looked up Den City, your dueling videos were all over the place, and seeing the design of your deck, I almost didn’t believe it. Like, what are the odds that Den City’s number-one duelist is  _ also  _ a master of the darkness? I couldn’t confirm it until we met in person, but, hey, congratulations. Your soul is a lot like mine. Those shadows aren’t going anywhere.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“...Something tells me that you  _ do _ ,” Judai replied, and when he shook the blister pack, three more fell out.

“The maximum dosage is six.”

“Yeah, for humans, which is why you shouldn’t try this at home,” Judai said before taking a quick swig of water, tipping his palm back, and swallowing five more. And there was too much to think about, that one sentence giving Yusaku an instant headache. He should have bought more medication. 

In an ideal world, nothing strange would have happened next. Yusaku, despite his headache, would have been able to ask more questions and then determine the threat posed by the Light of Destruction and the enigmatic person across from him now, who might not be a ‘person’ at all. It would explain why Judai’s stare gave him the urge to step away, as if a predator was circling closer from behind the perfect black of his pupils. 

Instead, through the incomplete windows of the tower’s second floor, Yusaku heard that unmistakable sound of a person screaming. 

Immediately he was at the gap in the wall. Bordering the construction site on the right side was a narrow walkway between it and a grid of small, sleepy residential buildings: small, overgrown gardens spilling out and climbing up weathered sidings and roof tiles. The change was not to any of the homes. The change was to the LED advertising screen on the back of the telecommunications van parked outside. Against a blinding, white background, there was a single word -- CALAMITY.

The word stretched over an electronic billboard that hung over the next block of houses. It repeated in miniature across a flurry of small televisions in a window display, and, craning his neck further to the side, Yusaku saw that ominous message had copied itself again and again, perched over the streets as rectangles of white slashed with black. Later, Ai would tell him that every digital sign in the city had been affected, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and they had all, in perfect synchronization, turned off after exactly 10 seconds. Advertisements had been joined by movie theater projectors and transit displays and digital clocks and wall-spanning art projects to form a vast, unified chorus of that single, sinister word. 

\---

Ai’s prediction was correct.

He did go to Café Nagi.

“I’d say ‘Told you so,’ but, you know, it’s not the right time to start gloating, since we  _ do  _ have important, hero-esque work to do,” was what Ai had drawled out as Yusaku shoved open the door, nodded at Jin, and accepted the cup of coffee that the younger brother wordlessly held out. When Ai’s eye blinked onto the display, Jin gave him a small smile. 

Yusaku got the words out before Shouichi could spin around in his chair. They were crucial, after all.

“Investigating this any further can put both of you in serious danger.”

“True, although I think we’ll be in danger even if we  _ don’t  _ investigate this,” Shouichi began with a chiding smile. “Try not to overthink it, Yusaku. We’ll blend into the crowd of the many, many interested parties in ‘CALAMITY’.”

Taking his seat, Yusaku brought up a new search. The media was flooded with scenes of chaos and confusion, many people instantly making the connection to the blimp incident only yesterday and reacting as human beings understandably would -- by running away, by giving in to a panic that could numb the senses and make calm, coherent thinking impossible. Minor injuries had been reported from drivers -- bombarded by ‘CALAMITY’ from all sides in the city center -- slamming their brakes. And the thread of chaos was already winding through the city, dipping through the concrete of its streets and spreading into its businesses, its schools. Its homes. 

The plaza outside was empty. The viewing screen relayed a story of a waitress who, pushed by a startled customer, had dropped a tray of empty glasses, fallen to the ground, and received deep lacerations over both of her legs. Behind her, the hospital was a blur of activity, and Yusaku took a long drink of his coffee. Next, the footage of the plummeting blimp was repeated.

Without looking away from the screen, Shouichi shrugged and said, “You probably don’t need to hear this from me, but whoever did this is  _ good _ . They hit thousands of different devices all at the same time. Even with a highly coordinated team, not to mention the tech needed to support implementing… I should probably stop praising the other side, shouldn’t I?”

“No. We have to figure out what they’re capable of,” Yusaku replied, scanning an article on the scale of the attack. It couldn’t have been carried out lightly, and whoever was behind it, with their efficiency and technical knowledge, could have done far, far more direct damage to the city. “They’re...trying to spread fear.”

“It’s working.”

Damn it. 

Grinding his back teeth, Yusaku did not respond, and when Ai’s emotions reached him again, he thought he had imagined it at first -- a deliberate, soft burst of  _ something  _ that made his next breath catch, as if Ai was dragging an impossible, intangible hand over his back and letting its warmth linger, gently moving into him. The touch moved higher, rounded his jawline. 

They absolutely, one-hundred-percent had to talk about that psycho-physical connection once this chaos was driven out of Den City. 

On top of everything else that made up his not-even-close-to-normal Friday morning, Yusaku -- blinking at a screen covered with scraps of code and images of a blimp at a sharp, downward angle -- realized that for several weeks, he and Ai had somehow avoided talking about the fact that, on a pretty regular basis, he could feel Ai stronger than anything else around him. Stronger than the Link Sense had ever been before.

On one night, it had been strong enough to pull him out of a nightmare, making the choking pain split apart and fade.

Ai.

“Thank you,” he said, one hand pressed over the display, and then Ai hummed in return, the tone light, energetic. Normal. 

“No worries, partner. I mean, only  _ one  _ side here has the full genius of the Ignis Ai! Oh, and Yusaku-chan, Jin-chan, and...friends, of course. Ha. Haha.”

“Nice save,” Shouichi grumbled. “Oh, and by the way, Ghost Girl’s report came in about ten minutes ago, although she’s already revising it. I swear, she’s on another level when it comes to… Nevermind. I’ve praised enough hackers who  _ aren’t  _ me today. She hasn’t found anything worth investigating in detail, although it’s probably only a matter of time.”

“...Right,” Yusaku said. Jin placing a neatly cut sandwich next to him was the second obvious sign that, yes, the Kusanagi brothers were trying to reassure him that the city hadn’t fallen over like a cardboard imitation. “What about the blimp’s target?”

The muttered 'dirigible' was from Ai.

“That’s...going to need a bit longer. I’ve modeled the city center using certified structural data, but because the blimp isn’t a standard vehicle, simulating it accurately is a  _ bit  _ of a pain. It might go faster if I could borrow Ai for a bit.”

“Ah, I’m irresistible, as always,” was Ai’s way of agreeing, complete with his avatar’s dramatic swoon when Yusaku placed the duel disk on the table. “Like the main love interest in a drama, I-”

“Some of us are trying to focus,” Yusaku chided, a smile ghosting across his face, and when Ai pouted, he flicked the duel disk with two fingers. “If you’re too charming, Kusanagi-san won’t get anything done.”

“Yeah,  _ I  _ won’t get anything done,” Shouichi mumbled, and Jin, sitting on a small patch of the desk next to Yusaku, shook his head. 

As expected, the combined forces of Ai and Shouichi were both loud and effective, but it wasn’t distracting at all. Rather, it was like having an open window and listening to the steady roll of the ocean, waves colliding and reforming while birds circled and sang out. The rustles were from Jin alternating between organizing the truck’s scattered supplies, walking over to briefly join the duo in either laughing or arguing, and pulling out his own laptop to check for incoming news stories. 

A space like this, with only his friends, formed its own rhythms and lulls, and Yusaku knew that he had been lonely for many years. He cherished what now seemed like an impossible change. 

That belief, that strength, could combat the persistent fear. 

And when Ai hooted at a breakthrough in their model several hours later, Yusaku found himself calm as he moved over, throwing one arm over the back of Shouichi’s chair while Jin crowded in from the other side. With the flair of a TV host, Ai twirled back with outstretched arms, and the monitor obediently flickered to an outline of the city, the buildings rendered as featureless blocks with the airship suspended over them, frozen. 

“So, our new vehicle model is based off the data I scraped from Cloudy and should be considered state-of-the-art,” Ai explained, bouncing on his heels briefly. “Unless someone, oh, I don’t know, decided to rewrite the laws of  _ physics  _ for fun, what myself and my dear human assistant have formed here is a working simulation of what the bad guys wanted to happen.”

The ‘dear human assistant’ let out a deep breath, Jin giving him a pat on the arm. “Yeah, with some disclaimers attached. For the first simulation, we’re  _ assuming  _ that the SOLtiS wasn’t going to input  _ any  _ new commands once the blimp started to sink.”

“Yeah, true…”

“That’s a pretty major limitation, all things considered,” Shouichi stated, and Ai huffed, crossing his arms. “Without data from the SOLtiS itself, we don’t know what it would’ve done if ‘the currently unknown but possibly supernatural force’ hadn’t stopped the blimp. To compensate, I started running further simulations to take into account, say, the SOLtiS adjusting the controls before impact. For my standards, the margin of error for some of these simulations was too high, so your  _ roommate  _ here has...done something with a bunch of weather data that I can’t verify the source of and several thousand mechanical logs from this ‘Cloudy' to 'fix' the 'problem'. Therefore, while the batch of simulations we'll show you after the first one looks impressive, just know that there was some notable manipulation of data involved."

“Yeah,  _ right _ . The end result is  _ simply  _ my ultra-sophisticated interpolation of all feasible actions that  _ the dirigible  _ could have taken after its nice, idyllic patrol was altered to become far, far more nefarious.”

“Let’s get started,” Yusaku said as a barrier to the next argument, and with a final wrinkle of his nose at Ai, Shouichi tapped his mouse once. In real time, the blimp dipped lower and lower until its cabin slammed into the smooth, white side of a building. Then, the simulation paused.

“We weren’t sure when the explosives would’ve been triggered,” Shouichi said next. “Everything in red would have been destroyed by the initial impact, with the areas in orange at high risk if the explosion began at either a short time before that impact or after it.” With another click, whorls of red spread out and were then wreathed with barbed shapes in orange, some extending down to the lower floors of the building. Some reached into the neighbouring ones.

“What about if the SOLtiS changed the blimp’s direction?"

Instantly the scene cleared, the blimp back to its position over the city. “‘Kay, my turn! Because I’m about to simulate several million possible variations, I’ve gone ahead and simplified things a bit. Each arc represents somewhere that the blimp could’ve gone based on its controls, mechanical state, and levels of fuel, helium, etc etc. The thickness of an arc corresponds to how many, err, imaginary blimps could’ve reasonably ended up heading in that direction. Arcs in blue represent a relatively high percentage of extremely unlikely outcomes out of all outcomes with the same directional classification. Arcs in purple are so-so. Arcs in  _ red  _ represent a relatively high percentage of extremely likely outcomes. Got it?”

“Yes,” Yusaku said, Shouichi nodding at his side.

“...You’re not looking so confident there, Jin-Jin,” Ai added on with a scrunched expression, and the younger brother laughed a little. “But, hey, no fear! Teacher Ai can simplify even further than this! Basically, no matter  _ what  _ the SOLtiS would’ve done next, it’s very, very likely that the blimp would’ve followed the reddest paths here. The real question is  _ why  _ I’m saying  _ blimp  _ again when it’s actually a dirigible… You humans, you can’t even use your own  _ words  _ correctly! And-”

“The teacher has distracted himself,” Yusaku said plainly.

“ _ Fine _ . Class is in session! Watch for the red,” Ai announced, and then overlapping arcs in blue poured around the blimp, multiplying until -- like many, many strings released in a tangled mess -- they created a network of thin lines that seemed to hover over the city, most missing the buildings entirely or, at their worst, clipping a roof or communication antenna. “Those outcomes would’ve followed some pretty  _ extraordinary  _ inputs from the SOLtiS. Like, I’m talking millisecond-level corrections to the altitude. Here is what tells the  _ real  _ story.”

The purple arcs were first. Three slowly extended from the blimp, curved tightly, and then passed into the buildings bordering the one from the earlier simulation. Each was at least ten times thicker than any of the blue arcs, and dimly, numbly, Yusaku recognized one plunging into the left wing of his own highschool. 

“How many simulations are you showing us?” he asked, and Ai replied with a warble at first, his small shoulders drooping.

“Oh, you know… Not  _ that  _ many…”

“Ai.”

“L-Look, just… Let me get to the next part.”

They stared at each other, Ai’s yellow eyes pleading with him. He listened. He leaned back and watched alongside the others as the scenery shifted again, beginning with a solid arrow in red from the front of the blimp. 

It was wider than any of the buildings below it. 

It dominated the cityscape. 

“Uh… I can adjust the scale, so you can actually see where it would’ve… One sec.”

In tandem, all of the arcs shrunk, those in blue like strands of hair with the purple as thin sticks. The pulse of red remained, so much larger than those around it. 

It ended in the same building as before.

“The biggest variation out of all the outcomes in this classification is the  _ exact  _ point of impact,” Ai quickly explained. “Taking that data and combining it with the structural data for the building might, uh, give us an idea of what the most likely affected rooms in the tower would be.”

“The hotel tower,” Yusaku confirmed, and as soon as he said it, he straightened. “If those rooms were filled, then…”

“It’s… No way. Is this…an assassination attempt…?” Jin’s voice was quiet. “But… Why like  _ this _ ?”

“Seems our villain is a multitasker. After all, why just take out a target when you can  _ also  _ freak-out an entire city at the same time?” Before Yusaku could interrupt, Ai continued with an acidic laugh. “Oh, and applying  _ that  _ mindset to our little mandatory reading session today means something pretty horrible might’ve already happened. Only, we’ll have to isolate it from all of the  _ other  _ data generated by minor accidents, interruptions to normal systems, etc etc.”

“Wow, that actually…” Running a hand over his face, Shouichi paused. “It...goes without saying that the shop is closed for the rest of the day. Sorry, Jin. It might be another rough night.”

“You should be home by 5.” At Yusaku’s suggestion, both brothers made the same face -- slightly annoyed, almost amused. “We should rest as early as we can after an analysis of our findings. This opponent is active, and we can’t afford to make mistakes.”

“‘We’ includes ‘you’, doesn’t it?” Jin replied, arching an eyebrow.

“Yes, it does.” Yusaku returned to his chair, his latest search with 4873 new results waiting to be sorted. He minimized them, bringing up a basic summary of the hotel’s activity instead. “If I don’t go home, my roommate will stay up late waiting for me.”

“‘Roommate’, huh?”

At Ai’s grumpy huff, Yusaku flicked the duel disk again. “We’re leaving in two hours. No excuses.”

“W-What?! D-Don’t say that like  _ I’m  _ tired! I can go all night!  _ You’re  _ the organic who is running on 50% coffee and 50% pure Yusaku-ness!!”

“When you’ve had a stressful day, you become tired easily. That doesn’t only apply to humans.”

“Yeah, yeah… You’re just trying to drag me home so you can test out my svelte android body.”

“Don’t say that,” Yusaku stated, deadpan, while Jin tried to cover a giggle, badly, and his older brother let out a long-suffering sigh. That same older brother might have also muttered, ‘Please, make the images stop,’ down at his keyboard. “We’ll gather information about the employees, guests, and other people at the hotel who could’ve been in the destroyed rooms, and then everyone will take a break. Including myself. And  _ you _ , Ai.”

“Yeaaaah, sure. Because  _ I’m _ -”

Thunk.

It happened again while they all remained frozen. The sound was a knock, made against the exterior of the truck.

“...Okay, maybe I’m a teensy-tiny bit tired,” Ai said, and he yelped when Yusaku stood up and grabbed the duel disk. “W-Wait! I’m just getting to the cameras  _ now _ , so-”

“I already know who it is,” Yusaku replied, glancing to where the Winged Kuriboh had phased through the wall and was peering down at him. 

When he opened the door, he was greeted with the same scene from before -- an empty plaza with news stories running above it, all fixated on ‘CALAMITY’. The surrounding stillness was unnatural, as if the people who should have been lingering in the plaza, meeting up with classmates or coworkers, had been deleted from the space like unnecessary assets in a videogame. 

“So, this is ‘mission control’,” Judai drawled out from behind him, and Yusaku turned around slowly, aware of how both Jin and Shouichi were being drawn in, the brothers stepping out of the truck and circling over to his position. 

When the screens had all changed to ‘CALAMITY’, Yusaku had bolted from the tower, an incoming call from Shouichi already ringing as he had taken the stairs two at a time. Ai, being Ai, had shouted out something like, ‘ _ Well, see you around, Hero Man. Don’t be a stranger!’ _ and then tacked on,  _ ‘Also, maybe try a hospital?? Human or not, it might be useful, so....?’ _ . 

That topic was a good place to start, and, taking a deep breath, Yusaku locked eyes with the duelist across from him. Attentive with its wide, doll-like eyes, the Winged Kuriboh had settled onto Judai’s right shoulder, partially covering the strap from his ragged backpack. 

“The painkillers must have worked for you.”

A small wrinkle between Judai’s eyebrows, and then he perked up. “Oh,  _ that _ . No worries. I’m a quick healer.” With a knowing smile, he stepped forward, his gaze drifting to Yusaku’s left. “I guess some introductions are needed. I’ll keep mine short, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re Yuki Judai,” Shouichi answered, and before the smirking hero duelist could interrupt, he continued. “Given that you’re a tourist here, I, on behalf of other local business owners, should probably make a point of being polite. Well, that is, unless you give me a reason  _ not  _ to.”

“Hmm… I’m not  _ planning  _ on it.”

“That’s a good start.”

When Judai’s stare was on him again, Yusaku straightened and asked, “Why did you come here?”

“Oh, and part two of that is ‘How do you keep finding us’? Seriously,” Ai blurted out, loud enough to make some curious pigeons take off, “it’s getting a bit  _ awkward _ trading meetings like this, don’t you  _ think _ ?”

“Let him answer the first question,” Yusaku said, and the duel disk audibly whirled, a grumble from Ai. When Judai’s smirk angled higher than before, Yusaku did not like it, as if Judai was about to flip an unexpected card and carve through his front line with perfect ease.

“Showing up at an unexpected time is  _ basically  _ my signature move. Makes life interesting, doesn’t it? Plus, well,” Judai said, laughing to himself, “just like I’m not done with you, you’re definitely not done with me. I had that figured out long before you slipped this into my bag.” The slim black chip Judai held up next could have been anything. However, the decorative purple border along one side gave Yusaku one important piece of information -- there was an extremely high likelihood that the object was a ‘one-hundred percent’ Ai original.

“Ai.”

“...Yes?”

“What did you do?”

“...Uh. ...Nothing?” When Yusaku shook the duel disk, that answer quickly changed. “O-Okay, nothing  _ major _ . When you were running out of the room, I, uh, may or may  _ not  _ have shot one of my brand new GPS tracking chips out of the duel disk and into this guy’s backpack, which he  _ shouldn’t  _ have been able to see given the angle and the limitations of the human eye, but, hey, I guess that’s a minor point, so… Wait, what were we talking about again?”

“The tracking chip.”

“Oh. Right. I was going to mention it later, and yet, uhh, ....”

“You forgot about it. That's how he snuck up on us.”

“ _ No _ . I was  _ distracted  _ by all of that dirigible stuff. It’s different! Totally different!”

“He forgot about it,” Shouichi said with a solemn nod, and Jin, with the blank look of an overwhelmed student in calculus class, walked back to the truck, sat down in the doorway, and opened a bag of chips. 

“Like, even if I  _ did _ , it would’ve only been temporary. I have all kinds of reminders set up,  _ accurate  _ ones, although… Maybe.”

“Ai,” Yusaku began, lifting up the duel disk until the sulking avatar was at eye level. 

Before another second had passed, he knew that Ai wanted to complain, and yet Ai didn’t complain. The Ignis avatar, with small, crossed arms and a pair of narrowed eyes, rocked backwards, a silence extending between them until Ai looked up again. “Everything since the dirigible went down has been one big stress test, and maybe I...haven’t passed with flying colours. Being forgetful is only charming up to a point. Past that, it’s...not good. It’s dangerous in all the wrong ways, not the flashy, cool ones.”

“I’m also tired,” Yusaku said plainly, and the lights in Ai’s eyes changed. They brightened. “None of this is going to be easy. We have to balance what we’re capable of against the stress that it causes.”

“...That means we can go home soon, right?”

Yusaku nodded, his smile tired but honest, and at the sound of Shouichi’s surprised laughter, trailed by Jin’s in softer tones, he glanced away. Leaning against the truck with one of Jin’s chips sticking out of his mouth, Judai was waving his hands in a ‘that’s not what I meant’ gesture. The Winged Kuriboh floating over him hooted and flapped its wings, although neither Kusanagi brother seemed to notice.

“Oi, Yusaku,” Shouichi started when he stepped closer, “you didn’t mention this guy was a Playmaker fanboy.”

“Two videos. I’ve watched _ two _ videos,” Judai said quickly, which only made Jin roll his eyes. “Hey, it’s not like that!”

“Lots of people follow Playmaker. You don’t have to act cool about it.”

“I…” With a pained sigh, Judai reached over, ignored Jin’s yelp, and shoved more chips into his mouth. “Alright. Keep messing with me, and I’ll keep eating your...vinegar, black pepper, and cheese chips. ...Not my first choice, I’ll admit.”

“You should buy your own if it’s a problem…”

“Anyways,” Shouichi said, clearing his throat and stepping over his brother with an exaggerated wobble, both of his arms out for balance, “I have some light reading to finish before calling it for the night. Jin, kick this fanboy out if he’s bothering you, although I gotta agree with him about that flavour.”

That ‘light reading’ would be the tedious and energy-draining task of sorting through the hotel’s personnel and customer files, provided that the files were easily accessible in the first place. Yusaku’s own investigation into that day’s ‘CALAMITY’ incident had resulted in no clear leads, the sheer scale and complexity of the cyber attack making it difficult to locate patterns and refine his search, and that left the hotel as their best option to determine a target, a motive.

A villain.

He caught the interested gleam in Judai’s eyes when he raised up the duel disk again to talk with Ai. He ignored the attention.

“Two hours is too long to keep working at this. I’ll help Kusanagi-san with his project, and then we’ll go home. Is that okay with you?”

“Uh, yeah. Absolutely,” Ai beeped back, and he shot a quick look at Judai, almost hesitant. “Also, if you’re waiting for a heartfelt apology, that might take awhile. I can offer a slightly sarcastic one instead as an Ai-approved special offer.”

Judai shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. What’s a little spying between friends?” 

“We can talk after I’m done,” Yusaku said to Judai, and he had intended to, like Shouichi, step through the small gap between Jin and the wall. Instead, he found himself staring at Jin, who was still munching on his chips. 

The staring did not go unnoticed.

“Normally, my brother is the one giving me that look,” Jin observed, peering up at him. “Believe it or not, I’m capable of sitting here and letting a Playmaker fanboy embarrass himself until you and Ai are ready to leave.” Without blinking, Jin moved his bag out of Judai’s reach, and the hero duelist slumped against the food truck. “I’ve already figured him out, one-hundred-percent.”

“Oh, that’s a bold statement,” Judai said, his eyebrows raised, and Jin snorted.

“You’re the type of customer who orders without counting their change first, finds themselves at the window missing at least 100 Yen, and then makes me wait with their finished order until another customer decides to just chip in so the line can move again.”

A moment passed, and then Judai dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, groaning while Jin, with a victorious smirk, crunched on a chip. 

\---

Eventually, the duo had settled around one of the tables in the plaza -- Jin blinking down at the cards Judai was holding out and wildly gesturing at -- and with the door shut again, Yusaku decided to say something extremely obvious, so obvious that it made Shouichi snort.

“Jin might be right about Judai.”

“Yeah. He’s good at spotting the difficult customers from across the plaza. Poor kid. A power like that is a blessing and a curse.” Cracking his knuckles, Shouichi leaned back in his chair, the information splayed over the screen dense. In less time than Yusaku had anticipated, they had narrowed the list down to fifty-seven possible targets, including politicians, journalists, and other media figures who had booked rooms at the hotel. 

“We should anonymize our findings and give them to the police.”

“...Yeah, that is the right thing to do,” Shouichi commented. “Even if we worked through the night, it wouldn’t be enough to investigate everyone here. ...Although, I imagine they’re overwhelmed with tips right now.”

“Pass them to Ghost Girl as well. She might recognize one of the names. Or maybe Blood Shepard will.”

“Okay. That’s... _ almost  _ all of the scarily talented hackers that we know. Next you’ll say that we should message the Knights of Hanoi.” A beat passed. Shouichi let out a tired sigh. “You’re about to suggest that we do  _ exactly  _ that, aren’t you?”

“Revolver, he…” And the words slipped away for a moment, Yusaku left blinking at his monitor. It was hard to describe Kougami Ryouken, Revolver. Months had stretched since their last contact. “Although our information on the Knights of Hanoi is outdated, I think we should still try it.”

“Even if it’s anonymous, they’ll figure out it’s us anyways. ...Some people are too good at what they do,” Shouichi grumbled, and Yusaku, one elbow on the desk, smiled at him. “Alright. It’s done. No going back now, and let’s hope that we don’t wake up to a couple hundred messages complaining about how Team Playmaker is too lazy to do their own research.”

“If we do, I’ll set Ai on them,” Yusaku said as he turned off the monitor and shoved his hoodie back on. Ai, alert at the mention of his name, made the duel disk whirl with delight.

“Oh,  _ please  _ use me as a threat more often. It does wonders for my ego.”

Rolling his eyes, Yusaku grabbed the duel disk. “What should we do with Yuki Judai?”

“Uhh… He’s our best source of info, and letting him go would be a mistake, so…”

“So?”

“Ha.  _ Well _ , I predict with 99.9999% accuracy that you’re  _ not  _ going to like this.”

\---

Yusaku did not like this.

“Oh, it’s...cozy.”

“That means you think it’s small,” Yusaku said curtly, throwing his hoodie at his couch while Judai, closing the door behind him, shucked his dirt-matted combat boots off. Onto Yusaku’s floor.

Because they were at Yusaku’s  _ home _ .

\---


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. because it’s currently Valent-AI-ne’s Day, I’m going to put this up even though the chapter just kinda, errr, stops happening. Ha. Hahaha.

\---

Violating every ‘How to be a good host’ guide that the internet could provide, Yusaku added, “By the way, I don’t have any food. I ate all of my bread earlier.”

“No problem,” Judai laughed out, and he placed his deteriorating backpack on the slim counter in the kitchen nook, the seams in such bad condition that Yusaku almost expected to find himself with Judai’s spare clothing suddenly everywhere. “While I made a valiant effort, I couldn’t eat through all of the stuff from this morning.”

“You mean the stuff I bought you.”

“...Technically,  _ yes _ ,” Judai admitted, and when he held out a slightly dented plastic bento box with an apologetic grin, Yusaku took it. And it was sometime between watching his dismal microwave buzz through what would, any day now, be its last action and witnessing Yuki Judai sprawl over his couch with half of an onigiri shoved in his mouth that Yusaku made three observations in quick succession.

One.

Judai did not move like an injured person. He never winced or held himself in a stiff position. 

Two.

The odd green-blue colour in his eye had not appeared yet. Regardless, the reoccurring phenomenon was nothing that could be explained by Yusaku's high-school biology classes, and he doubted that the solution would be so rational.

Three.

The bruise that had been on Judai's jawline was gone. Fast healer, indeed.

“You really aren’t human.”

Judai did react -- smirking as he took another bite. His torn-up jacket had joined Yusaku’s hoodie, both slung over the back of the cheap couch, and their sleeves acted as a partition, cutting through the center cushion. On a normal day that was part of a normal week, Yusaku would have eaten downstairs in his bedroom. Usually at his desk. Sometimes at the table in the corner if Ai complained too much about his ‘bad habits’. 

Never at the couch in front of his dusty television, and never with someone as unpredictable as Judai staring at him.

“Technically, I’m three-quarters human,” Judai said, with the teasing air of a duelist making a quick counter, and Ai, shoved between Yusaku and the arm of the couch, beeped in surprise. “Although… I’m only one-half the-person-who-everyone-calls-Judai. I mean, I’m still  _ Judai _ , although… It’s kinda complicated.”

Yusaku’s next statement was one he had considered in far less detail. He said it anyways.

“You stopped the blimp yesterday.”

“...Dirigible,” Ai corrected, and Yusaku turned the duel disk over. 

Judai snorted, amused. “I didn’t stop whoever is behind this from scaring a lot of people.”

“The explosives never reached their target. You stopped others from being hurt,” Yusaku declared, because it was  _ true _ , and Judai continued to pick at a bowl of reheated chicken dumplings. He changed the subject.

“...I probably shouldn’t admit how excited I am to freeload off you for the night. That construction site gets  _ cold _ , and other places cost money, which is a serious negative. Very, very serious.”

With a final look at his half-eaten, lukewarm meal, Yusaku forced himself to stand up and throw it in the fridge. Ai squawked when Yusaku then picked him up. “H-Hey, don’t put  _ me  _ in there next!”

“No, we’re going to bed,” he said, although that had been too direct -- the display suddenly covered with hot-pink hearts. “You’re giving our guest the wrong impression.”

“No worries. I’m not one to judge,” Judai commented with a completely unnecessary wink, and although Yusaku had wanted to have the final word, he found himself caught off guard by Judai jumping up and taking his shirt off. 

A Friday night did not normally involve inviting a stranger to his apartment and then having that same stranger undress in his living-room-slash-kitchen, and Yusaku could feel his brain stall, all processors overwhelmed. 

Okay.

“By ‘we’, I meant Ai and myself.”

Judai laughed, and Yusaku had not planned on learning what colour his guest's boxers were, and yet the universe worked in mysterious ways. They were green. With Kuribohs on them. 

Great.

"Mind if I borrow your hot water?"

"Sort of," Yusaku said, deadpan, and Judai walked past him into the hallway, picking the right door on his first try. And although Yusaku had no interest in being host of the year or scoring anything above a '1' in hospitality, he still heard himself mutter, "Wait. I'll get you a towel. And...clothes. I guess."

"Hey, treat me like that and I'll never leave," Judai chirped back, and Yusaku felt all seventeen years of his age as he moodily continued down the squeaky hallway, threw open the door to the lower level, and stomped down the stairs to his bedroom. In which Ai's SOLtiS was already waiting with a neat stack of fabric: a blue towel, a pair of pajama pants that Yusaku avoided after tripping over the too-long hems repeatedly, and a t-shirt that Ai had ordered online as one of the many examples of his horrible sense of humor. Yusaku had no intention of ever wearing a shirt that declared him to be a 'PLAYMAKER FAN' in bold red letters on white cloth. 

"I thought I burned that shirt."

Pouting, Ai leaned forward to transfer the items, his earrings clacking with the motion. "Ah, would you really do that to a precious gift from your precious Ai? ...Wait. Actually, don't answer that."

Shaking his head, Yusaku repeated his slightly awkward, definitely annoying journey in reverse, and as he propped his shoulder against the frame to the bathroom door, he immediately noticed more than just three things. Like how, for example, Judai was close to the dingy mirror above the sink and poking at his messy bangs. Or how he must have taken off the bandages before reaching Café Nagi, a river-like shape of dull pink flitting over his ribcage, the wound sealed but raw. Or how a network of scars banded his back, some old and raised with knitted scar tissue.

Or how that prickling,  _ watched  _ feeling never vanished when he was around Judai, no matter the setting. Even in his own, too-small bathroom with its chipped tile and ancient, useless fan, he wanted to step back, maybe even raise an arm to protect himself from that unseen  _ thing  _ shifting through the air.

And yet Fujiki Yusaku was absolutely, one-hundred-percent too stubborn to show that unease.

"What is the other quarter?"

"Hmm? Oh, thanks," Judai mumbled, distracted as he ruffled his own bangs again. "How's my look? Maybe I'll go short, just to mix it up. ...Or not."

"If my question is over the line, you can tell me that," Yusaku said, and when Judai glanced over, the mood dropped. Briefly, until it reset, as if nothing had happened. As if his eyes hadn't been guarded, shadowed. 

"It's not, but… Sorry, Playmaker. It must be hard for you to process all of this stuff at once, and I've definitely been careless. Let's leave the big questions until tomorrow, okay?"

"Right. ...I was supposed to be doing that anyways," he replied, blinking at the plain wall, and Judai burst out laughing. Boyish and loud. 

"Ah, I know that feeling. Breaking habits is rough, isn't it?" Yusaku had moved to leave, and then Judai suddenly continued. Their eyes met. "Hey, we should duel sometime."

"Why?"

"...You're joking." A beat passed. Judai's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, you’re  _ not _ ?! Nothing’s better than a duel when it comes to getting to know someone, since our decks show who we are and- Hey!”

“I just remembered that I’m too tired for this,” Yusaku stated, halfway down the hallway and waving over his shoulder, and as he closed the door to the lower level, he could plainly hear Judai whine. 

Of course he still paused midway down the stairs to flick a switch on the wall -- chrome and glass-like its in sheen against the old plaster. Behind him, an array of motion sensors went live, followed by the faint whirl of electronic locks clicking into place. 

Installing the secure door had been a long, heavy, and masochistic adventure in reading contradictory instructions and hoping that the building’s owner wouldn’t stop by for an ill-timed inspection, and it had come to a somewhat-satisfying conclusion after he had decided to give in and pay the Kusnanagi brothers in unlimited pizza for one night of their assistance. Unless he could physically dispose of the hardware containing it, there was more than enough data stored in the confines of his bedroom to link Fujiki Yusaku to Playmaker. And to many unsolved mysteries that SOL Technologies were still picking away at.

And to several computer crimes.

Well, more than just ‘several’.

Sighing, Yusaku kicked his socks towards the laundry basket and made a point of turning his computer off, as if the sight of the blank screen would be enough to wipe his mind clean of all the competing thoughts clinging to it, moving in patterns too chaotic for him to understand. Given the evidence, a few panels of metal and some alarms wouldn’t be enough to stop that intangible  _ thing  _ lurking around Judai from attacking (he assumed it was connected to the blimp incident, for lack of a better theory), and yet, an action like that would serve no immediate purpose. Earlier that day, he had trespassed onto a building site and provided an enemy with the perfect location to strike him. The worst Judai had done was give him a headache. 

Because Ai gave him a headache on a daily basis, that alone was no reason to judge someone harshly.

Plus-

“You’re taking awhile to get changed,” Ai drawled out, spinning lazily in Yusaku’s desk chair and throwing him an even lazier smile without opening his eyes -- dark lashes, sparked with iridescent blue. 

“I’m not taking my own advice. That’s the problem.”

“...Okay, you’re sounding a bit serious there, Yusaku-chan. ...I can open my eyes, right?”

“Why did you close them?”

“...Because? Suspense can be fun?” Ai replied, the space between his eyebrows crinkling, and in typical Ai fashion, he opened one eye first -- peeking. “So, what’s up?”

“I’m always repeating how we need to believe in people and what we can accomplish by understanding each other,” Yusaku said, surprised at how quickly the words came out when he was calm. Absolutely calm, with Ai’s gold eyes fixated on him. “And yet… It’s as if all of me is just waiting for Judai to do something suspicious, something negative. It’s...as if I don’t believe that something positive can come from any of this. I’m not looking for it.”

“Ah, Yusaku…”

Running a hand up the nape of his neck, he stepped back. “Today was too long.”

“Yeah,  _ agreed _ . Been awhile since either one of us was involved in...heavy stuff. I mean, heavy stuff that’s not completely focused on...the reality of my existence and how it's still a...delicate situation, to put it lightly,” Ai stated, breaking off with a small laugh, and then his simulated breathing hitched, stopping with an absolute silence as Yusaku directed him up from the chair by his wrists. 

Yusaku’s grip was loose, just a suggestion of touch -- the lightest, barest pressure of his fingers against the sleeves that covered Ai’s wrists, that did nothing to stop the small branches of electricity curling between them. And Yusaku knew that like this -- close, with the spaces between them temporary and fragile -- Ai could analyze him in millions of different ways. By the steady beat of his pulse. By the exact set of his expression, compared against innumerable data points that Ai could shift through with an ease that seemed supernatural, cosmic. Compelling. 

“Uh. Y-Yusaku…?” Ai stuttered out when Yusaku took another step back, unblinking. The gem marking Ai’s throat bobbed, the components inside of it working. “You...f-feeling alright?”

“Earlier I said that we were going to bed. Is that okay with you?”

“...Hold on. I might be crashing.” A pause, and Yusaku waited for the answer, Ai’s eyes wide after a rapid series of blinks. Slowly, incrementally, Ai let the SOLtiS move closer, long, elegant fingers brushing unseen circles over Yusaku’s bare arms. “I’m...about 92% sure that I’m no longer crashing, but even if I am, well, hey, what a way to go.”

“Does that mean ‘yes’?”

“ _ Yes _ . Yes! Yes? Yes,” Ai said all at once, and Yusaku rolled his eyes.

“You can wear those pajamas, if you want.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh, I  _ can _ . Hold on one sec! D-Don’t, uh, stop this touch-y, feel-y mood. Unless you want to of course. Ha. Hahaha.”

“If you take too long, I’ll fall asleep by myself,” Yusaku muttered back, and three events happened in quick succession: Ai sprinted past him, clipped the hip of his body against the desk, and then dramatically pinwheeled his arms for balance at superhuman speed. The curses were next, complicated and zig-zagging between human languages and quick bursts of static, and Yusaku, rolling his eyes, began working off his jeans without another word. Swapping out the shirt would be too much effort.

“Don’t you dare get changed before I can see if you’re wearing those ‘completely unlicensed but still charming’ Playmaker boxers I ordered for you!”

“Spoiler alert. I’m not.”

After a ‘thunk’ and more cursing, Ai blurted out, “Since I’ve fixed up the SOLtiS, do you realize we can now wear couple’s pajamas? And-”

“No.”

“...Harsh. So harsh.”

In comparison, Yusaku’s standards for his own pajamas were much, much lower, and while yanking on the nearest pair of sweatpants, he climbed onto the bed and then, boneless, flopped down, numb to everything but the play of Ai’s electric-like energy inside of his wrists, coiling down to his fingers and then retracing its erratic paths. Ai gave a running commentary from the other side of the room, going over in extreme detail why he thought those heart-shaped buttons were, quote, ‘the pinnacle of all human design’. 

Ai had slept next to him before, but never when using the SOLtiS. 

It was impossible to remember the first time. The moments had all blurred together, because they had all seemed so natural, so inevitable. Someone must have made the first move. Maybe he -- stretched thin and fraying -- had one night grabbed the duel disk off the desk and shoved it next to his pillow. Or maybe Ai had circled closer as a drone until, eventually, he had settled over the creased sheets and stayed still, stayed because of the impossible circuitry that traveled through both of them. 

Yet-another unspoken thing between them was that, yes, it kept happening. He kept waking up with the casing of the duel disk under his fingertips and the hums and pulses of Ai inside his head. Sometimes -- with shafts of morning sun flitting through the curtains and throwing their abstract, soft-edged shapes over his tangled blankets -- Yusaku just stayed in bed for longer than he should, completely enraptured. Trapped in the best possible way. 

A creak of the floorboards, and, blinking to clear the fog in his head, Yusaku looked up. Ai had braided his hair. For some reason.

“Nice pajamas.”

“Yes, they  _ are _ ,” Ai declared, beaming with pride, and when Yusaku shifted closer to the wall, Ai blissfully said a collection of words that would have given Yusaku a headache if he wasn’t so tired that he was, as a small consolation, temporarily immune to any Ai-induced headaches. “Maybe I should watch a tutorial about this.”

“...What?”

“This ‘cuddling’ stuff,” Ai said with an elaborate hand gesture, and then the rambling started. “Although, my composite body is heavier in places than an organic one, not to mention my precise control over my mock-nerve-endings, which means that the whole ‘Oh, you’re on my arm. Please move.’ kind of situation doesn’t affect me for very long since I can just turn the nodes off. ...Not that I’m giving you a free pass to crush me. Oh, and-”

“Ai.”

“...Yes?”

“Come here,” Yusaku mumbled, and so he reached forward, grabbed one of Ai’s wrists, and pulled. Minor chaos ensued. Human beings, after all, could not shut off all sensations from the right foot after it was accidentally kicked by a stuttering android. 

But it was fine.

His forehead was against Ai’s chest, one of his arms under the pillow (numb, not that he cared at all) and the other over Ai, keeping him close until the unsteady, flitting spikes of their connection began to flow together, to find an even rhythm. And up close, with the night fitting in around them, Yusaku knew that he should admit one thing. Just one.

“...They really are nice.”

A surprised click. “The...pajamas? Ha… Earlier I...thought you were being your usual sarcastic self, Yusaku-chan.”

“I was, but…” To make his point, he slid his palm higher up Ai’s back, mechanical contours passing underneath. “They’re soft, and that suits you.”

No answer. Not at first, and lulled by the slight rises and falls of Ai's chest, Yusaku almost drifted away without hearing it. Eventually, Ai tilted his chin down, the start of how he gradually, carefully brought Yusaku in even further. A fog was rising. A curtain was being drawn over everything but this contact. 

"Goodnight, Yusaku-chan. Let's...have good dreams, shall we?"

And, smiling at the traces of those words, Yusaku did sleep. 

\---

And when he woke up (early enough that it was still dark, the grey of the night diluted by the warm orange of the streetlights outside), Ai was there, lying on his side and so still that it stunned Yusaku for a moment. As if this were the first time that he was seeing Ai in this form. Under the wayward curls of his hair, the high planes of his face seemed impossibly smooth, like Ai had found a way to defy the laws of materiality. The fragments of Yusaku's dreams were just that -- fragments, insignificant. Jumbles of meaningless images and conversations. 

He had expected nightmares. 

There were none. 

Shaking his head, Yusaku crawled out of bed -- awkward and unsteady from the barriers made by Ai's thrown-around limbs. Getting up the stairs and into the kitchen didn't usually take so long. 

The fact that he couldn't stop himself from staring at Ai contributed to the delay. A lot.

Unfortunately, Playmaker had data to analyze and moves to predict, both of which depended on him drinking something caffeinated first, and so Yusaku forced himself up the stairs and hit the security switch. An alarm would have sounded had any barriers been breached. 

Although, the motion detectors probably wouldn't have tracked the transparent Kuriboh hologram. Projection. ...Ghost? 

After standing at the top of the landing, staring at Ai, and thinking harder about ghosts than he ever had before, Yusaku realized that he needed that coffee. Badly.

It was very kind of Judai not to destroy his apartment overnight. Minus the snoring person tangled in a thread-worn blanket and hanging off the couch, the kitchen-slash-living-room-slash-temporary-guest-room looked as it should have, down to the packages of instant coffee shoved next to his usual mug. And-

And yet the feeling was off, goosebumps rising on his bare arms even though it wasn't cold.

If Judai was faking sleep, then he deserved several awards for doing such a convincing job. Whatever it was curling in the empty spaces of the room, it continued to watch while Yusaku checked his messages and glared at the kettle as if that would force the laws of thermodynamics to rewrite themselves and make his water heat quicker. After a cursory search, it seemed that no major incidents had occurred overnight, although some actions could always be cloaked by the network. Or the chaos of a vast, breathing city, containing so many individuals. Further work was required. 

Perfectly timed with the ‘click’ of the kettle, Judai stirred and then, throwing up one lanky arm, said, “Hey, how do you feel about making some for me too?”

Because the words had been muffled by the blanket, Yusaku could have easily pretended not to hear them. But luckily for his ‘guest’, Yusaku did have a second clean mug. And a sense of honor that had yet to be tarnished beyond repair. Caffeine headaches could be painful, after all.

“Some people answer questions with words,” what was Judai drawled out next, and when he stood up, he cracked his shoulders at a volume Yusaku would describe as ‘alarming’. 

“I can't believe you're wearing that.”

‘That’ being the Playmaker shirt, in all of its misguided glory. 

“Hey, free is free,” Judai declared, sauntering over to the kitchen-side of the room. “...You're not arguing. Which means I can keep it, riiight?”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” Yusaku muttered back, and although he had turned to leave, he had stopped after one step. The action remained incomplete. From behind him, there was the unique noise of someone blowing on a hot drink and then tsk-ing in annoyance. 

And from behind both of them was that other presence. 

“It’s likely that Calamity will make another move this morning,” Yusaku stated, glancing back. “I don't have the tools here to monitor the city, and that's…important.” His brain stalled. He frowned, and Judai waited, one hip propped against Yusaku’s counter. “Later, we need to talk. Really talk.”

“Sounds like I’ve made you curious, which, hey, I’m not going to lie. That works out great for me. Means I have a decent shot of convincing you to leave my stuff here for awhile.”

Yusaku did ignore that, and when he returned upstairs with Ai secured in his duel disk and babbling about the new security measures implemented by the city, Judai had already _left_ , leaving only a neat pile of belonging by the bookshelf that Yusaku never used. 

And, even without the new houseguest, the room remained different, as if the shadows had all fractured and then settled into new shapes. As if the second mug resting neatly on Yusaku’s chipped, scratched-up countertop meant something abstract, something unknown.

\---

That morning, the city was under a deep, pervading silence, and it extended, persistent even as the scraps of grey clouds dissipated. In the city core, the sight of a blue sky was given to an audience of near-empty streets, to long stretches of bare pavement. 

The city was waiting for its next reason to be fearful.

Every hour that passed carried its own weight, and sitting next to Shouichi in the cocoon of the truck, Yusaku worked, accompanied by the flicker of pressed keys and faint, oscillating rhythm of Ai inside his veins. None of their messages had been responded to. No leads had opened. The hotel guests all had too many connections, and none tied together in such a way that they revealed a useful truth, a piece of  _ this  _ that he needed. 

“The blimp never reached its possible target,” he mumbled towards the keyboard, Ai a blob of pixelated purple-black at his elbow. “We’ve warned the authorities, and many of the guests have already left Den City, although that doesn’t mean any of them are safe...”

“On a positive note, none of them have reported any injuries or, err, ‘strange’ activities, aside from the whole, uhh, falling dirigible thing,” Ai commented quickly, earning him a hum of agreement from Shouichi. “Plus, we’re past noon now! That breaks the pattern of Calamity appearing!”

“A sample size of ‘2’ is not very reliable. We cannot accurately predict their actions.” Sighing, he added, "In addition, our theory of an assassination attempt also lacks evidence. The building could still have been targeted for another reason."

“...Yeaaaah. Suuuure, but… Uh…” Snapping his digital fingers, Ai jumped up to his avatar’s full height. “Oh! Let’s go check Link VRAINS!”

SOL Technologies hadn’t reported any security breaches. No data had been corrupted. Ghost Girl would have her ‘helpers’ monitoring all chat logs, public or otherwise. From those basic observations, he could have turned down the suggestion. But he didn’t. 

Instead he stood up and turned to Jin. “You can take my station.”

Jin, who had been grimacing at his laptop while huddled in one corner of the truck, flinched a little, but then he straightened. “Okay. I’ll call you if anything suspicious happens, although that...sounds vague, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. Actually, it sounds like something I'd say,” Shouichi commented, his fingers flying over the keyboard while a model of Den City pivoted on his monitor. Coordinates were represented by red nodes. “Have fun, Yusaku. Try not to get involved in any  _ other  _ conspiracies, okay? You’re giving me wrinkles.”

“I’m not trying to.”

And with Jin swinging into Yusaku’s vacated seat, Shouichi flashing his younger brother a toothy grin and then batting him on the shoulder, the switch began. 

This reality to another.

Yusaku to Playmaker. 

The smooth interior of the log-in capsule was replaced with the edge of a grey cliff, overlooking the metropolis below that rose in its gilded tiers under a cascade of vibrant colours, like light refracting off a diamond. 

With a dizzying corkscrew, he dove towards the city waiting below, 

\---


	5. Chapter 5

\---

To another player, Yusaku’s log-in would have appeared as a glitch, the texture of the ground below his avatar switching to the default black and then back again to the weather-streaked stone. The new update had given players more customization options for their avatars, and by exploiting certain weaknesses in the new code, Playmaker could turn himself into a wraith upon log-in, his avatar an intangible, invisible entity moving through the virtual world. From his point of view, the avatar was still there, just beneath a long, pale blue cloak with ragged edges. The visual analogue had been unnecessary. Ai had insisted on it for ‘the sake of your style, Yusaku-chan’.

Hurling towards the main hub of Link VRAINS, Playmaker was like the wind itself, and the cloak whirled around him soundlessly. But there were still noises accompanying his flight, of course.

Ai yelped in his ear and then broke into shaking, high-pitched cackles as Yusaku skimmed over the silver pathways and curved through the vibrant crowd. "A-Attendance is waaay up. Like, a fifty-percent increase in- Gah! Sculpture! Sculpture!"

Dodging it, Yusaku let the board glide to a stop, delicate fairies and fierce dragons passing overhead. More and more users now opted to have Duel Monsters follow their avatars as 'companions' and scales, feathers, and furs in fantastic textures and colours were blotted over the crowd. And although the companions' behaviours were rudimentary at this stage, the users clearly gravitated towards them all the same. Fuzzy beast-type monsters trotted after knights in armor and idols in elaborate suits and gowns. The plaza was sparked with life, with activity. 

But the conversations within it were strange.

"-end of the world? Like,  _ yeah _ , I don't want to go to class on Tuesday because group presentations should be classified as a form of torture, but all of this is, like, so excessive."

"Whoever these hackers are, they're the worst type of people. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if they're doing all of this to manipulate the stock market or some bullshit like that. Or...maybe they're trying to drive businesses out of Den City. ...As if the job market here isn't a nightmare already."

"...Haven't you guys considered that  _ maybe  _ we should welcome this chaos? Den City is a corporate hub, and all of us here are just pieces of grain to feed its corporate elite. Maybe this scare is the wake-up call we all  _ need  _ to take  _ real _ action against the true calamity."

"Uh… Isn't this voice channel supposed to be for Entertainment Idol Discussion?" was what Ai chirped up with, and cycling through the different public channels, Yusaku was greeted with similar fragments of dialogue over and over again. Some people yelled with frustration. Others treated the situation as a joke. Or goaded the individuals around them into arguments. 

Such arguments littered the plaza like strewn glass, and as Yusaku sorted through them, the gentle, swaying monsters that rose like festival lanterns above the crowd seemed entirely misplaced. 

"...Nice of a certain Phantom Lady to mention that all of Link VRAINS has transformed into a powder keg. ...Powder bomb? ...Okay, I'll drop the analogy and just say, yeah, this is not right. No one's even talking about card games!"

"You're going to summon her if you insult her work like that," Yusaku said, his own voice, like Ai's, muted by the cloaking mod. And as he stepped away from the sculpture, a small prickle went up the base of his neck and rounded the crown of his head. Like an extension of the Link Sense, indicating a shift in the network.

Since Calamity had ruptured the almost-normalcy of his life as a highschool student, many things were suddenly different for Yusuke, sliding out of place like mud beneath his feet. And yet, many valuable constants also remained.

Like the exact way Ghost Girl's eyes pinched at the corners when she found something particularly amusing. In this case, Ai yelping and toppling over in surprise when she stepped out of nothing and twirled her ragged cloak. Like his own, it was translucent, and it fell neatly over her mercenary-style avatar. 

"I'll have you know that every virtual world based in Den City is in the same or even  _ worse  _ shape. It's also not very polite to complain about free info, especially when it's from a high-quality source like yours truly."

"Complaining is part of my act. I can't just cut it out," Ai grumbled, and Yusaku, frowning at a tight-knit group with yellow faeries dotting the space above them, turned to face Ghost Girl. Bessho Ema. Around them, the virtual space continued to ebb and flow, peripheral voices rising and falling.

"Sifting through all of this new data on Calamity is like trying to pan for gold in a river. Only," she added, placing a gloved hand on her hip, "I can't tell if the river has any gold in it at all. For all I know, it might just be a polluted mess. And a total waste of my time."

"And people get sassy about  _ my  _ comparisons," Ai grumbled. 

"Hmm… Well, I'll always be a digital treasure hunter at heart, even if I keep acting more and more like one of the good guys lately." A wink, and then her tone changed. "As of right now, sixteen different hacking collectives and four political groups have claimed responsibility for Calamity's actions, probably because they all want to be associated with that kind of power. Of course, all of that's in addition to thousands of individuals -- most of whom  _ think  _ they're completely anonymous -- claiming to have insider information on the group. ...So, to summarize, there's a lot to go through. Plus, rumor has it that a new emergency task force has been put together just to investigate the chatter online."

Shaking her head, she stepped back -- strands of lilac cascading over the artificially torn fabric of her cloak. A vibrant wing in red and orange phased through her, the monster's controller shouting, "Yeah, of course the SOLtiS want to get us!  _ All  _ of us! Anyone who says otherwise is  _ lying _ to you."

"... It's never a good sign when 'AI' is trending in the network," Ai mumbled, his humor thick and changing the cadence of his words. But Yusaku could feel what was vibrating under them. "Yeah, it's official. This new group is...seriously getting on my artificial nerves, as if dropping a dirigible next to a highschool wasn't bad enough."

"We'll solve this," Yusaku said, because it was true. The answer was a whisper of static, like a small huff. "Ghost Girl, I have information that can help you narrow your search, but I want the results to be exclusive."

"Mhmmmm… A request like that is going to cost your friend a lot of merchandise," she replied, and Yusaku silently acknowledged that he would have to pick up some hours at Cafe Nagi. Since he did owe Shouichi a lot. 

Lately Ema had taken to making very complicated custom orders. Yusaku had tried not to get involved after charring one of her hot dogs and then receiving over two-thousand spam emails the next day. 

"Look for the Light of Destruction. It's an entity monitored by the Ultraviolet Project. That's all I can give you."

She arched one narrow eyebrow. 

"...All of that certainly  _ sounds  _ like the beginning of a conspiracy theory, but… A lead is a lead,” she admitted. Nodding, he brought up the user menu, but her voice stopped him from logging out. “You haven’t heard back from the Knights, have you?”

“ _ What _ ?! Did you bug us?!” Ai exclaimed before Yusaku could, uselessly, tap the ‘mute’ button on his duel disk. Although she still wore a half-mask, he knew that Ghost Girl was now smirking.

“Ah, I don’t always have to resort to tactics like that. ...Especially not when you’re so quick to tell me the answers to all of my questions, dear Ai-chan.”

“...Oh. Oh, maybe...I do talk too much...on rare occasions,” Ai mumbled, and Yusaku rolled his eyes. 

Her avatar lightly shrugged. “Mostly out of curiosity, I tried sending a friendly wave to the Knights last night, and all I got was the cold shoulder. Go figure. And your, ah, ‘snappish’ tone tells me it was the same for you.”

“Yeah, ‘curiosity’,” Ai parroted back, pausing to give another little huff of static. “To be nice, I gave you a small ‘win’ earlier, but make no mistake, Ghostie. This AI isn’t the type to be tricked twice.”

What followed was another verbal sparring match between her and Ai. Yusaku watched the sky instead, the layers of pristine blue crossed by delicate, web-like strands. They were the trails left behind modified D-boards, iridescent and slowly, inevitably brushed away by the digital wind. 

“That information I gave you, it might lead you to new enemies.”

At his statement, Ai peered up at him from the duel disk, disc-like yellow eyes wide. Ghost Girl’s answer was as expected. No deviation.

“Oh, that’s cute. I promise to watch my back, sweet Playmaker~” she chirped out with a quick, heart-like gesture that had Ai sputtering and Yusaku staring at her blankly. The background of moving players changed again, many taking to the sky and scattering like lanterns cut loose. So easily could all of this be erased, the pain of that action distorting the memories that would remain. 

He opened his mouth, and then he shut it again, aware of Ai’s gentle warmth sinking into his wrist. 

And with a causal twirl of her long hair, Ema turned away. Her words were weighted. “Believe me, the last thing I want is to be defeated and erased again. And yet, at the same time, what’s the point in having talent if I don’t use it? That’s a question real heroes probably find themselves facing all the time… It’s a hard one to answer.”

With that, she left. Her image dissolved.

The question she left behind was difficult.

And each passing second under that deepening fear only made it more and more difficult to answer.

“We need more information,” he muttered, and only two others could hear him like this -- Ai, who perked up with a small squeak and Jin, who monitored him now. “I miscalculated. This morning, I shouldn’t have let him leave.”

The person he needed to speak to next wouldn’t be in Link VRAINS.

\---

In the blink of an eye, the streaks of hyper-bright colours were replaced with the dull inside of the VR room, and Yusaku wasted no time in palming the door open, 

“Nii-san’s out for a walk,” Jin reported, glancing over his shoulder. The monitors in front of him displayed the same overlapping newsfeeds as before. A security camera on the outside of the truck caught Shouichi pacing back and forth across the empty plaza and glaring at a takeaway cup like an interrogator from a movie would at a stubborn prisoner. “If Calamity is making a move today, then they’re taking their time.”

“They do seem to like big displays,” Ai commented airily, and Yusaku nodded in silent agreement. 

“The stuff on the counter is yours, by the way.”

It took Yusaku a weirdly long time to connect that statement to the paper bag with a Nagi logo on the front. And the takeaway cup resting next to it.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jin replied, waving a hand carelessly. “Oh, but watch out for that new guy. He will absolutely steal half of that if you let him.”

That conclusion took far less time. The association was almost instantaneous. 

“He’s already sleeping on my couch. It can’t get any worse than that,” Yusaku said, deadpan, and Jin snorted, tilting his chair back. 

“I can call my brother inside, if you want his help in locating your, ah, ‘target’.”

"There's no need for that!" The announcement was followed by the  _ whirr  _ of Yusaku's duel disk disconnecting and rising up in drone form, Ai on the very top in a pose that could only be described as 'dramatic'. "My Ai-approved tracker chip is already on the target! I can pinpoint his location with an accuracy that cannot be rivaled by-"

"Didn't Judai discover the chip yesterday? You know, because you threw it at him?"

At Jin's interruption, the drone careened to the side, almost clipping a monitor. "Uh, that was...not a big deal. Nope. Definitely not."

Yusaku spoke next. "Ai, why is the chip with Judai?"

The drone resumed its level hover, putting Ai at face height. "Honestly? No idea. Last night I was completely out of it, which, hey, I guess that's one side effect of… Uh. The events. Of last night. You know, the events between the two of us. Ha. Haha. Hahaha."

"I picked the wrong time to come back inside," Shouichi grumbled from the doorway, and he pushed past Yusaku with a heavy sigh. “Whatever you two are up to now, just keep the usual communication lines open. If a traffic light goes out in this city, I’ll notice it.”

It was as Yusaku zipped up his hoodie that the remaining pieces connected. The reason was absurdly simple, and crossing the plaza, the bag tucked in the crook of one arm, he shook his head. Ai’s electronic beep was the equivalent of a question mark. Yusaku replied.

“Judai took the chip with him. He knew we’d want to find him.”

\---

With a wink of the eye-display, Ai had transformed the top of the duel disk into a navigator, the blue-on-black map of the city tracking the pink dot of their ‘target’, and, getting off the bus and making for the sidewalk, Yusaku had effectively narrowed the gap to just three blocks. Because Ai’s chatter was interlaced with reports from Jin and Shouichi (most ending with frustrated sighs, or jokes. Some were bad enough to make him blink in surprise, usually while Ai cackled away), he had put his earbuds in, the usual rumble of the city dulled. Smoothed out.

Like yesterday, Judai had picked somewhere outside of the dense city center to explore, the current district a mixture of old and new. Rentable offices for start-ups were juxtaposed with small corner stores, the kind with peeling paint, clouded windows, and vibrant, laughing groups by the narrow entrances. The textures of the city could be hard, like that of the pavement below, but they weren’t necessarily that way. It was a misconception to think of the city as just unforgiving, as just cold.

It had taken him a long time to understand that. The coffee had been poured hot enough to, after two transfers, still press its warmth through the sleeve. He had eaten on the first bus, his friends babbling to each other in his ears, and despite the headlines in red across the interior displays, the two girls in matching sweaters in the opposite seat had laughed and whispered to each other with shy smiles.

The calm peeled away when Yusaku was only two blocks away from Judai, who had been perfectly still for at least five minutes. The calm had been a frost resting in the shade of a leaning tree, and now, it was exposed to the light. Crystal after crystal vanished.

At least, that was the clear image he saw when, without warning, Judai started to move. Quickly.

“ _ W-What?!  _ D-Does that idiot think this is a  _ race _ ?!” Ai blurted out, loud enough to pitch into rustling static. Yusaku was already off, the ‘clang’ from his right following the impact of his half-finished coffee cup against the rim of a trash can. The lines of the display bobbed up and down as he pumped his arms, and when he dipped around a corner at Ai’s command ( _ “Left! Left! Let’s go, Yusaku-chan!” _ ), one of his earbuds slipped out, swung back, and smacked him across the face. 

In Link VRAINS, this kind of pursuit normally involved letting his body glide into its next actions, the D-board an extension of himself and quickly responding to even the slightest adjustments. In reality, Yusaku, awkwardly spinning to avoid a parked stroller before bolting across a street, was forced to acknowledge that, okay, maybe he did need to join a sports club. Or to stay awake for gym class instead of finding a convenient place to sit on a bench, lean against the wall, and close his eyes until someone noticed he had slipped away. 

Reality involved a lot more sweat. 

Which was bad.

“Why is he-? Oh, okay! I, err, one sec…” THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. With their worn-down treads and flat soles, his sneakers absorbed none of the impact, every push forward echoed by an ache up his legs. More of the city’s tangle passed in a blur, a streak of grey-blue. “Okay, I ‘borrowed’ a security feed, aaaaand… Our target is chasing after two unknowns on foot. They’re…going into an alley, and… It cut off. I’ll try to- Ah, look out!”

Three things.

One, himself skidding to a stop across the bare concrete of the small plaza, both of his arms thrown out for balance while he tried to focus on the person grasping for his sleeve.

Two, the girl. Wearing jean shorts and a Red-Eyes Dragon T-shirt. Younger than he was with the emblem for a local middle school on her baseball cap, her auburn hair in a messy braid that fell over her shoulder. The display of her standard-model duel disk had glitched, leaving a maze of pixels that relayed a distorted error message, and some impact had cracked it, the spider-web of uneven fractures making the characters even harder to read.

Third, her injuries. Her knees were deeply scratched, badly enough to drip crimson blood down her legs and onto the white of her sneakers. Her expression was twisted, pained, and the volume of her shout caught him off guard, as did the strength of her grip.

“You’re the person he was talking about! Blue hair with pink streaks and an old-school duel disk. Look, we’re going after him! I-I’m not going to just  _ stand  _ here and wait, okay?!”

“‘He’ has to be Judai,” Ai quickly commented. Again, by some unknown means, Judai had tracked them in return.

This was not the time to theorize on Judai.

“Wait here.” Bandages. And something to clean the wound. “I can-”

“Weren’t you listening?!” She shook him, hard enough for Ai to yelp as the duel disk swung up and down. “If you wanna help me, then help me go after those fuc-”

“Woah! Language warning!” Ai, now on speakers, shouted out, and before the girl, gnashing her teeth at the interruption, could continue, Ai did. “Hey, Yusaku-chan, as your totally-legal AI-assistant, I’d like to report that Judai’s still on the move, and if something goes bad here, which it totally looks like it might, then he’s outnumbered. Two against one.”

Yusaku had already come to the same conclusion. 

“Use your drone form. Find him, and report back to me on my cell.”

It took effort to disconnect his earplugs and shove them into his rarely-used cellphone, a light weight in his back pocket, and it took effort to hold his arm still while the duel disk smoothly detached itself from him and then shot up, perfectly vertical. Ai’s presence was a faint current that ran through him, that ran inside of him, and with every meter of altitude gained by the spinning rotors, the feeling weakened, subtle at first. The absence left him cold, and-

Focus.

"What happened?"

Although she hadn't let him go, her grip had slackened, just strong enough to offset the weight she was keeping off of her right leg. Its knee was the worst, an uneven block of red. "Who  _ cares _ ! We're losing time! Look, let me-"

"If the situation is dangerous, then you need to tell me," he said, louder than he wanted to. Inside, under his skin, the rhythm of Ai was weak, a consequence of the distant compounding between them, and he- Focus. Don't break. 

And, incrementally, the fury crossing her face lessened, like a fire shrinking as it curled around wet fuel. "It's simple. I was dueling one of those two bastards -- the one with the blond hair -- and I won, thanks to my dragon deck. Of course, the moment it ended, the  _ second  _ bastard came out of nowhere and shoved me to the ground while the first bastard hacked my duel disk! He had this… This  _ thing  _ that looked like a USB drive, and although it scrambled my display, I could see that all of my cards,  _ all  _ of them, had been wiped from my account!"

An illegal override tool.

Although recent updates to system security had made it more difficult for players to have their digitized cards stolen by a direct connection, incidents like this were still recorded in Den City. Shouichi, picking up such side jobs by accident, had corrected three similar thefts by tracking down the stolen cards and reversing the transfers. And causing some digital chaos for the unfortunate thieves.

Although, those measures required being able to retrieve the activity logs from the affected duel disk and piece together information about the program used to scramble the cards' unique IDs, which was likely impossible if the hardware itself had been badly damaged. 

Therefore, the most viable solution was to locate the thieves themselves.

"How did you meet Judai?"

With an exasperated sigh, she ground out, "Well, I'm assuming that this 'Judai' is the guy in the red coat. Sure, there were some people around the plaza when all of this happened, but none of them, like,  _ bothered  _ to come help me! Someone yelled that the police had been called, which… Okay. Sure. The whole city is in  _ crisis  _ mode because of Calamity. Like, of  _ course  _ the cops aren't going to rush over here because of a card theft!!" She broke off with a glare over Yusaku's shoulder, and it was true that several onlookers were lingering around the borders of the plaza, most clutching cellphones in tight grips. "URGH, so,  _ anyways _ , I'm trying to stand up again when a guy in a red coat suddenly runs over and helps me to my feet. Then, he tells me that his sidekick is right behind him -- that's  _ you _ , by the way -- and he took off after them. ...There! That's  _ it _ ! Now can we go?!"

"Yusaku-chan?"

Ai.

Immediately he held up a hand, stopping her. "What is it?"

A slight crackle in his right earbud, and then- "Well, Judai and the Bad Guys are now on a roof. They went up a fire escape, Judai followed, they kicked  _ out  _ the supports on part of the fire escape, Judai somehow  _ still  _ followed, and now we...either have a fight or a duel about to break out. I can land and-"

"No. Stay out of range."

"But-"

" _ Ai _ .”

"...Okay. I. I will." A slight pause, and Yusaku waited through it, his chest tight. "I-It looks like Judai's magically talked Thug A into a master duel, even though, w-well, with Thug B there as backup, it could still get ugly!"

"Give me directions. I’m moving out now," Yusaku stated, and that's when he turned back to the person waiting for him with a twisted scowl. "Can you walk?"

"Sort of. Probably not for very far before I fall," she hurriedly admitted, and that was the prelude to Yusaku jogging down a network of thin alleyways with the girl, named Chidori, on his back, her fingers digging two jagged rows into his shoulders and her legs wrapped around his waist. As if she were a human backpack. 

Yusaku would not describe the situation as 'ideal'.

It was awkward. Her weight seemed to increase with each new turn, a sudden dizziness like a veil over his eyes. But Ai was the navigator in his ear (" _ Take the next right! You're getting closer!" _ ), and, gradually, tangibly, the feeling of him was returning. Pulses of starlight were inside his head, and it didn't matter if the next section of brick wall swayed unexpectedly, because his strength was being joined with that of someone else. Eventually, the added weight meant nothing. 

The whisper of Ai's rotors signaled for him to raise his head, and, panting, he located the small dot of the drone over the apartment building in front of them. It was in an industrial, refurbished style, the red brick accompanied by thin metal details in stiff fortifications. A section of the fire escape lay uselessly in the alley, and, perfectly timed, Ai informed him that there was no other way to scale the building. Unless he wanted to try a drainage pipe. 

Which he did not. 

Wordlessly, he leaned back and waited for Chidori to drop down. She winced, but that was all. Like him, she was fixated by the problem facing them. "Why would they go on the  _ roof _ ? They're totally trapped!"

"There's another apartment complex on the north side. They're roughly the same height, and it's possible to scale the fence and jump from one to the other," Yusaku said, relaying a theory from Ai, and he walked further up the alley until he found an empty cardboard box propped up next to some recycling containers. "Do you have a pen?"

"A pen? Uh… I should." She had one in the small pouch clipped to her belt, the ink blue, and Yusaku had a scrap of paper in his front pocket. It was a remnant from his last coding class -- the instructor insisting that some problems in simple programs became clearer if they wrote their code traditionally. After folding the paper into quarters, he, as neatly as possible, drew two interlocking Ds on a clean side and quickly shaded them in. 

"I need your hat."

"What? Why?!"

"Because someone might think a person who looks like a middle-schooler shouldn't have a part-time job," he said, and with a scrunched-up frown, she cautiously twisted it off and handed it to him.

"Okay, I get it, but anyone can see that you're just faking a Den City Delivery uniform." At first, he said nothing, focused on pressing the paper against the slight indentations of her school's logo so that it would hold. As a direct result, her volume increased. A lot. "We need a better plan than this! This won't  _ work _ !"

"Do you see the camera above the entrance?"

"Uh… Yeah," she replied, and Yusaku, crinkling one of the corners, had managed to make the logo stick. If the image was heavily pixelated, it would pass for an authentic one. 

The front door for residents was under a metal arch, like a square bracket tilted onto its side, and the segmented, white shape of the security camera stood out even from their distance of approximately ten meters. With the hat completed and shoved over his hair, roughly enough to let his bangs cover his eyes, Yusaku quickly brought up a rudimentary search on his phone. The occupant list outside the building would likely only contain the residents' family names. For authenticity, he needed a first name, preferably that of the person in the third-floor apartment that occupied the building's rightmost corner. Their television was on, suggesting that they were both home and distracted. It was the combination he needed for this to work with minimal dialogue (and therefore minimal chances to make an obvious error), and-

Another increase, loud enough to make him flinch. 

"... Hello? Are you ignoring me?"

Oh.

Right.

"The camera is an old fixed-position model, capable of only a low-quality video feed."

"Okay, but, still, it's pretty rare to get an  _ actual _ delivery person. It's mostly robots, not at all like when I was a little kid."

That was another feature he had considered. He knew about the camera from researching models to install outside his apartment, a necessary precaution to protect Ai and Playmaker from discovery. He knew about the delivery company for a similar reason, one rooted in the precarious state of the public's opinion on AIs. 

"Within the last six months, Den City Delivery has transitioned to using only human couriers. Anyone can confirm that with a cursory search."

"Ah, okay. Because there's less chance of a bad AI hurting someone that way, right?"

"No."

"...Oh? Uh, then why would they do that?"

"Because they don't understand what AIs really are." With a curl of emotion hooking inside his chest, Yusaku adjusted the hat, hefted the box in front of him, and stopped at the edge of the camera's radius. "Once I'm inside, wait for me at that restaurant, " he said, and she, jerkily, turned in place to take in the blue-on-red exterior of a fast food chain. 

Against the backdrop of a plain intersection and with flecks of dried blood over both of her bare knees, Chidori looked very young and very lost, her wide, grey eyes mirror-like. The display of her duel disk continued to flicker, the text oscillating between the scrambled letters for 'E R R O R' and 'NO COLLECTION FOUND'. For the first time since they had met, it seemed like she wanted to cry. 

Instead, she nodded stiffly and took a step back, hugging herself. Until now, he hadn't noticed the fresh scratches over her thin hands. Another sign of her being knocked down to the plaza, brutally. 

"I will come back, and I will have your cards," Yusaku stated, and she nodded again. Shallower this time. "If you want to call the police or your parents, now would be...a good time for that."

"Yeah, I… I know. And...thanks."

Immediately Yusaku upped the volume on his earbuds, letting fragmented words and shouts slip through. Ai was transmitting a live feed from the rooftop. "Status report."

"Ahhhh… Yusaku-chan, hurry if you can. Our hero in red just took  _ 3000  _ points of damage right to the face! And- Why's he smiling about it?! I- Just hurry!"

"Got it."

And, stepping into the camera's line of sight, Yusaku buzzed for apartment 3A. 

"Hello?"

"Delivery for Naoki Iguchi," he said, angling his head down. There was a pause.

Followed by an electronic ping, indicating that the door was unlocked, and, careful to keep his face away from the camera, Yusaku nudged it open with his shoulder and-

He was tackled the rest of the way through by Chidori, who then did an excellent job of almost pulling his right arm out of its socket. "Hurry! The elevator is over there!"

"I can see that," was Yusaku's curt reply as he weighed the positives and negatives of the current situation, although so far he had only identified negatives. 

The first positive he found, identified as the elevator doors neatly closed, was that the elevator did actually work. That wasn't a given with old buildings.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?"

The elevator, probably owing to the building's age, rattled as it traveled upward, faint vibrations buzzing up his tired limbs. No, mad wasn't the right word for it, not at all. Chidori rushed to continue, one of her hands slashing at the air. 

"B-But that's not fair, okay?! I… I  _ need  _ to get those cards back! I… I…" Sniffling, she wiped at her face. "T-There was...a fire last year, and… I don't have my originals anymore, and… I know how it sounds! A-A lot of people say that the digital versions aren't the same. Although… When I play with them, it's like...I can remember everything. All of the duels when I was a kid. All of...the games I played with someone who isn't here anymore, s-so…"

With a mechanical grind, the elevator passed the third floor. In one ear, Ai was relaying the moves of the continuing duel, the rise and fall of his voice quick. Reassuring. Little by little, it made the world seem clearer. Its details fit together. 

"I'll make a deal with you."

With a ragged, laboured breath, she looked up at him. "I'm… I-I'm sorry. I can't leave without my deck!"

"That's why I'm going to lend you mine." The fourth floor, passing with a faint whine. And, as Yusaku unclipped his deck box from his belt and held it out to the shaking girl across from him, he said, "At the restaurant, I'll exchange your deck for mine. I want it back."

Fifth and final floor. The doors opened, and he met her wide-eyed stare. 

Another second passed. Ai had started another rambling, branching play-by-play of the duel, and the syllables then started to blend together, indicative of the rapid fall of those words. Like raindrops in a spring storm, the kind that left everything warm afterwards. And under a halo of diffused light. 

"You'll...r-really get my deck back?"

"Yes."

Another second, and then she -- carefully, as if moving too suddenly would be enough to break the deal itself -- took his deck and stepped back. "Be careful," she murmured before the doors closed, and when they did, Yusaku took off. He dropped the cardboard box. The door he wanted was unlocked, and it was followed by stairs that he took two at a time and then-

From underneath the twisting grey clouds of pixelated debris that unfurled over the roof like a massive pair of wings, he could see the stark red of Judai's jacket. 

More than that, he could see how, even though Judai staggered to his feet next, the duelist wore a wide, wide grin. It alone was enough to cut through the grey of battle damage, and then -- as the two active duel disks ticked along to Judai's falling life points, stopping at 200 -- Judai looked at him with clear, amber eyes. His grin shot up.

Yesterday, Jin had characterized Judai as a simple person, one who would habitually forget his spare change and annoy other people. Perhaps that was true in some way, or for some situations, but-

With Judai staring back at him over a stretch of field banded only by the jagged shadows of his opponent's monsters, it didn't seem true at all.

The flat roof ran between them and extended out to the low metal barriers. Faint pulses of wind tugged at Yusaku’s clothes, carrying with them a piercing cold. The earlier sunlight remained choked by clouds. The thief Judai faced -- registered duel ID ‘Stinger’, with only standard duels recorded on his account and a suspiciously high percentage of those duels interrupted -- was behind a wall of Link monsters, the supported Gaia Saber boosting over 3000 attack points. The mounted knight’s horse was restlessly trotting back to its position, its sides veined with fluorescent blue and its tapered spikes catching the thin light. Early in his hunts for the Knight of Hanoi, Yusaku had used that card himself, the non-specific Link materials coupled with the relatively high attack making it useful for those rough duels that he had needed to end quickly. Efficiently.

With only a glance at the field, he had the sense that Stinger’s deck was much like his own dummy deck -- just a collection of convenient parts.

Like ‘Stinger’, the other thief was tall, blond, muscular, and had the same closed, tensed posture. He had the registered duel ID ‘Slugger’, the corrupted data of his public profile a sign that its dueling history had been clusmily wiped clean, possibly to hide results even more suspicious than Stinger’s own. Both thieves wore plain, long-sleeved shirts with dark jeans, ideal for slipping away into a crowd. And yet a precaution like that would be meaningless now. Because Yusaku would not let the thieves escape.

Because  _ they _ would not allow it.

“Ai!”

With a whizzing sound, the drone dropped vertically and attached itself to Yusaku’s raised arm -- the precision perfect, the motion seamless. Immediately he felt those missing parts of Ai return, the subtle ebbs and flows of energy, and relief crashed into him,  _ Ai’s  _ relief. And, taking a deep breath, his shoulders dropping, Yusaku let his stare pass over the two thieves, their glares meaningless. The closest of the two, Slugger, visibly tensed, and an attack was possible. Yusaku understood that.

Although, while Ai had hidden a taser in a slot on the bottom of the duel disk, Yusaku  _ did _ want to avoid using a definitely-not-legal-for-him-to-have weapon for as long as possible. Hopefully the bad guys would cooperate.

“You lost, Delivery Boy?” called out Slugger, and their other target chuckled, shook his head, and pivoted on his heel.

“Yeah. Is he supposed to be your backup?”

Judai perked up. “Oh, he’s my sidekick.”

False.

Wrong.

“I was hoping you’d duel better than you lie. How disappointing,” Yusaku said, deadpan, and Ai, being Ai, altered between head-splitting laughter and failed attempts at saying Yusaku’s name, none of them getting past the second syllable. Because Judai was, clearly, a very strange individual, he had also burst out laughing. 

“Ah, ah… So harsh. But, hey, no worries,” Judai declared with a thumb-up gesture. Yusaku felt the sudden need to squint, like the sun had decided to come out just to torture his eyes. “Nothing suits a hero better than a pinch, and if you keep watching, you’ll get to see my grand reversal.”

“Your opponent has 8000 life points due to a combo triggered by your last attack. His strongest monster has 3400 attack points. You have 200 life points and no cards on your side of the field.”

Judai’s smile widened. “Exciting, right?”

Snorting, Stinger interrupted. “You should listen to the Delivery Boy, although it’s not like that advice will save you now. I end my turn, so hurry up with your own and stop stalling.”

“Stalling?”

“You talk so fucking much,” Slugger grumbled, crossing his arms and taking up a position next to Stinger. Because moving from the door could allow for them to escape, Yusaku remained where he was -- Judai in profile, the remaining debris vanishing as the Solid Vision cleared the field. The rainbow lights of Judai’s old-style duel disk cycled once, and the smile on his face changed, still friendly and yet also different. Very different.

“Well, my dear sidekick,” Judai began with one hand on the edge of the duel disk, “you did summarize things pretty well, but I gotta ask. Do you think I can win this?”

“It’s a duel, and you still have cards,” Yusaku said plainly, and he didn’t need to explain any further than that, not when Judai’s gaze flickered over to him again. He saw the green.

“Draw!”

It was Judai’s third turn, and with the draw, he had three cards in his hand.

Apparently he didn’t move quickly enough for Stinger, who chuckled and rasped out, “Maybe you need one of those Ai assistants. Take it as a free tip. They’re good for beginners.”

“No worries. I already have an assistant,” Judai commented with a tap of one finger to the side of his head. “Although, I probably shouldn’t call them that.” Given that Stinger and Slugger both looked at each other and squinted, they were likely confused. Yusaku was also confused, and-

Suddenly Judai had a card on the blade of his duel disk, and it sent up a wall of light.

“I activate Pot of Greed! And… I draw two cards. Straightforward, isn’t it?”

The object rose to hover above the plain arena, the contours of its green face split by a yellow-toothed grin, and Yusaku was deeply aware of Ai’s presence. He could not have blocked out Ai’s presence now even if he wanted to, and yet Ai still shouted as if it was 4 AM and Yusaku was half-asleep at his keyboard after logging six hours straight for a coding project.

“New rule! New rule! If we end up dueling The Hero in Red,  _ that  _ card is ultra banned! Blacklisted! I’ll get the SOLtiS and rip it up if I have to!”

Yusaku, uselessly, tapped down the volume to 20%.

“A cheap move. Although, it’s not like it’ll do you much good,” Stinger declared, and Judai, now with four cards, focused on him next. 

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘cheap’.”

“Most duelists in Den City rely on, you know, archetypes, link summoning, clever card interactions… Things that are a bit more complicated than just thinning out your deck.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong here, but weren’t you the one who set up the main parameters for the duel? Life points, duel mode… I’m pretty sure there’s even an option on the menu that lets you review the ban list. I know that I checked it, so…”

Stinger bared his teeth and raised his duel disk higher. “Oh, so  _ I’m  _ the idiot here?”

“Hey, hey. I didn’t go  _ that  _ far!” Judai rolled his eyes, amused. “I guess a card hunter like yourself is usually more concerned with getting players to show off their good cards than with anything else. I get it, and I’d be happy to show you some more of mine.”

“Yeah, just hurry up,” Stinger barked back, and Slugger took over next.

“A bunch of fusion cards aren’t worth stealing anyways. A deck like yours is destined for nothing but the trash.”

It was subtle -- how Judai’s stare darkened. “Sure, you can say that, but at least my cards are my own. I don’t think I can say the same thing about either one of your decks.” In another corona of light, a card hit the duel disk. “I activate A Hero Lives. Since I have no face-up monsters on my side of the field, I can pay half of my life points to special summon a level 4 or lower Elemental Hero from my deck. Come out, Elemental Hero Prisma!”

“O-One hundred life points?!” Ai squeaked in surprise, accompanied by a flurry of beeps from Judai’s duel disk. 

“He didn’t draw that spell card this turn,” Yusaku observed, as he had tracked the positions of Judai’s held cards. “He expected to survive his opponent’s attack.” And maybe Judai had even planned to lose all defenses, golden shafts of light banding his empty monster zones until, like a stray icicle cut loose, a shimmering figure in silver dropped onto one. In facets of green, grey, and blue, the hero fell into a tensed pose, one arm stretched high over its featureless face.

And Judai continued, his clear voice ringing out.

“I activate Prisma’s effect! Once per turn, I can reveal a fusion monster in my extra deck. By sending one of its listed materials from my deck to the graveyard, I can give Prisma that monster’s name until my End Phase. I reveal Elemental Hero Air Neos to send Elemental Hero Neos from my deck to the graveyard.”

“.... _ Huh _ ?” was Ai’s insightful commentary, and Yusaku, tapping at his display, magnified the portraits of the cards that Judai had listed. He would have read the effects, if Judai hadn’t kept going. His words carried with them a strong pull, and Yusaku-

He needed to observe this.  _ All  _ of this.

Judai played another spell card, another that he had kept in his hand. 

“I activate Wrath of Neos! By returning the ‘Neos’ on my field to my deck, I can destroy all cards on the field!”

A piercing, white-blue burst, overlain by the image of a muscular warrior lashing out with a punch directed at the ground.

Following the shockwave, the field itself began to shake and crumble in simulated destruction. Stinger had effects to activate, his backrow sparking with chains that began and needed to resolve, but none of them could counter the wave of non-targeting removal. Monsters crumbled into indistinguishable cubes of grey and then vanished as the duelist funneled cards from the graveyard back into his deck. Only one monster survived, saved by one of the triggered effects. It was weakened.

Gaia Saber, a Link 3 with 2600 attack, remained positioned in front of its controller, its sleek-edged weapon poised high. The wisps of smoke trailed down the blade. 

“How’s that?” Judai called out with a wink. “I call that my ‘Neos Delta Hurricane’. Kinda cool, don’t you think?”

“Damn, you really don’t get it. You’ve just let me set up my hand for my next turn, which your lucky ass won’t survive,” Stinger ground out, regarding his near-empty field with a twisted scowl. “But,  _ sure _ , go ahead. I got my knight and 8000 life points, and you have  _ two  _ cards. I’ll get a good laugh out of it when you fail, ‘hero’.”

“Hey, hey. I already told you that I’m playing to impress my sidekick. Not to brag, but I think I’ve already got you cornered.”

“ _ Yeah _ . Riiight.”

“Oh, don’t believe me?” With a bark of a laugh, Judai let another card fall, and again everything shimmered under the rainbow colours of a new spell card. “Well, maybe I need some backup to convince you, which means I’ll activate...Neos Fusion!” 

Stars fell in a dizzying array of colours. Around them, the city faded, the darkness of night surging in as constellations swirled, and Yusaku -- running a hand over his duel disk, over Ai -- waited for them to brighten even further than this. Because the effect hadn’t resolved. 

Not yet.

“Neos Fusion allows me to special summon one Neos fusion monster from my extra deck that has exactly two materials by using monster from my hand, deck, or field and ignoring that fusion monster’s summoning conditions. Naturally, I’ll use my deck, selecting Air Hummingbird and my second copy of Elemental Hero Neos.” And, perfectly timed, the cards were filtered out of the deck, Judai holding them up for a beat before feeding them back into the disk. The cosmetic scenery cycled faster, new pinpricks of colour sparking against the spreading, ink-dark void, and Judai stood perfectly still as a nebula formed. He spoke to his opponent directly. “You’re wrong about my cards, just like you’re wrong about the meaning of a duel. Duels shouldn’t be used to hurt others.”

In response, Stinger shook his head, that scowl only deepening. “Yah, because a loser has any right to judge me and my brother. The strong take from the weak. That’s just how it is, and-”

“You’re wrong,” Judai said, and then, in a seamless motion, he flipped the top card off his extra deck and threw it onto the extended blade, the response immediate. Wind swept across the field, cutting through the nightscape and, simultaneously, gathering at the very center. “Values like yours have nothing to do with strength, and I’ll show you why right now. I special summon Elemental Hero Air Neos!”

The wind surged outwards, and, in streaks of red, the hero appeared, its feathered wings extended like the crown of a mountain range. With gleaming, golden claws, the powerful monster in vibrant, stark red lowered itself into a fighting stance, muscles rippling under the dissipating starlight. And Ai gasped in Yusaku’s ear, the attack/defense of the new monster displayed in bold yellow numbers. 

2000 defense points.

_ 10400  _ attack points. 

“With only one card, he made  _ that _ ?!” Ai blurted out, and Yusaku remained fixated on the duelist behind the monster that now seemed to tower over them all.

Judai had one card in his hand, the last one he had drawn, but it wasn’t played next. Instead, he let his fingers trail over it for a beat, that same beat ending as he called for a different effect. “Then, I’ll activate the second effect of the Neos Support in my graveyard. By banishing this card, I can increase the attack of one fusion monster with ‘Elemental Hero Neos’ as a listed material for 500 until the end of my turn. So, that leaves my Elemental Hero Air Neos with-”

“10900 attack?!” Ai finished, and the wrist guard shook, imitating a shudder. “H-Hey, Yusaku-chan, his cards are strong,  _ really  _ strong.”

“Yes, but…”

“But  _ what _ ?!”

Pausing, Yusaku looked back at the hero duelist, awash with the remnants of those alien colours that scattered as they faded, leaving behind the storm-like sky of their reality. “It’s just a feeling I have. There’s no proof,” he muttered, aware that Ai was waiting and, as a consequence, rattling the duel disk slightly. “He’s not going to play that last card, and… I want to know what it is.”

“Ah, so his mysterious act is working on you…”

There wasn’t time to answer, not when Judai was throwing one arm out in front of himself, his fingers spread, and the monster waiting for his call took to the sky, rising in one bold leap before unfurling its wings again and casting a dark shadow over those below. “Air Neos, attack with all of your might!” Judai shouted, and the simulated wind grew in intensity, enough to whip at Yusaku’s clothes and make Ai sputter in confusion. Below, under the shadow of its opponent, the knight stirred, readying its mount as it stamped its hooves down, sparking like flint. 

Stinger was cowering and pale, tremors visible in his hands, and the shadow only widened over him, the hero in red plummeting down, down, down.

There was no counter.

The attack went through, those 8000 life points dropping to 0 while the knight was vaporized from the force of the blow leveled against it. A pillar of strength, the hero flared its wings, and that was the final image of the duel that stayed with Yusaku. Rustling feathers. The sheen of its blue gems. The unyielding stance.

Judai dropped his arms to his sides. Artificial smoke trailed after him -- like long wings, or like a cape -- until it too faded into nothingness. 

"When I was a kid, I always liked it when a villain would stop the evil act and become a hero. ...Of course, I get that it's not always so easy, but it's still worth trying, isn't it?" Judai said while Stinger, his head bent, rose from where he had fallen to his knees, as if that attack had really extended into him. And-

"Look out!!" Ai called out over the speakers, because Slugger, lunging forward, had drawn a knife.

For a painful second, everything fell away. Ai was beating alongside his heart. 

Yusaku knew that he had started to bolt towards Judai, someone frozen in place while the rooftop was consumed by activity. Stinger was screaming for his brother to stop. This decision was wrong. It should not have been made. 

Judai moved when Slugger swung the knife out in a wild arc, and Yusaku could not process how it happened, how the larger man was suddenly flat on the ground and breathing hard while the knife clattered away, skidding towards the edge of the roof and catching on the slight ledge. The outcome made no sense, not when Judai’s arms had been raised but not enough to block the incoming attack. It was as if a part of his shadow had struck out, the uneven, knife-like shape ending in a thin line of burnished gold. Like the claws of something unknown.

“W-What were you  _ thinking _ ?!” Stinger was yelling, crouched over his brother and grabbing at his shirt collar. His weight kept the other pinned down, and Yusaku, taking a breath that did nothing to calm the buzzing uncertainty inside him, took the chance to look back at Judai.

Long, unkempt bangs fell over Judai’s face, and as he tilted his head back, the glow of his lurid eyes was revealed. One was a flame in orange, the other in blue-green. They locked on Yusaku, and -- flinching, feeling himself brace against  _ something  _ \-- he stepped back. The action was watched with that inhuman focus, those blazing discs of colour eclipsing all else. 

\---

If Yusaku was asked to, he could have created a very accurate timeline for the next two hours. He had memorized the names and ID numbers of the officers who arrived on the roof to detain the suspects. And to gather witness statements.

That night, there would likely be an ‘unofficial’ change to the data regarding the arrest of Stinger and Slugger. More specifically, the contact details and biometric identifiers of two witnesses would be corrupted. The loss would not impede the investigation, considering that four different recordings of the two suspects unceremoniously throwing Chidori to the ground had been turned in as evidence. Not to mention the illegal override device found on Slugger’s person. The data for Den City Delivery would be so easy to falsify that Yusaku could, if pressed, do it on a school computer and still leave behind no traces.

The brothers were suspects in four related incidents, all resulting in the theft of high-value cards.

Yusaku understood that he had not been physically harmed. At worst, he had given himself a toothache by clenching his jaw too hard. And yet it was as if he had been stunned by some impact, his thoughts sluggish and confused beyond the details that he mechanically committed to memory. Ai was letting those circles of static electricity trail over his back, the pressure of Ai’s touch slight but still there.

In contrast, Judai seemed nothing but calm, as if he already knew the outcome would be them walking down the sidewalk later and safe with their knowledge that, yes, the officers really wouldn’t be suspicious of them at all. Judai even made a pun bad enough that the younger officer cracked a smile and tried to stop himself from laughing. Emphasis on ‘tried’.

From the moment the officers had arrived, Judai’s irises had remained brown, flecked with lighter sections in yellow-gold. He smiled so naturally, and he answered the questions first, letting Yusaku keep much of his silence. While Yusaku had shoved the balled-up hat and scrap of paper into his hoodie pocket, there were other flaws that the police could have caught, like the security footage somewhere (which  _ would  _ be erased, later) that clearly showed him sneaking into the building. And yet none of that seemed to matter. At the present, the flaws seemed to exist only inside his head.

When Judai had launched into a play-by-play of the duel, the older officer had quickly taken Yusaku aside and asked if he was “holding up okay”. He had nodded quickly, to end the encounter.

Of the two brothers, Slugger protested the most by far, swearing as auto-locking restraints were wound around his wrists and ankles. With his neck bent low, Stinger had barely said a negative word about his own treatment. More than that, he had admitted his crimes directly to the officers, the flat monotone not matching the strained, tensed way he held himself.

When backup arrived, the brothers were escorted off of the roof, and it was as Stinger was lead in front of them that, stiffening, he stopped. The officer holding his arm tugged him along, and Stinger’s words, like his glassy stare, were for Judai.

“Of course it’s hard for most people to change. But for some, it’s  _ impossible _ , and...there’s no point working towards something that’s just going to fail.”

Shrugging, Judai replied with, “The future isn’t set in stone, so why not take a chance? Plus, maybe being one of the good guys will suit you better.”

And, after that, there was more of Judai talking. According to his story, he and Yusaku were ‘friends’ who had planned to meet in the plaza for a duel. It made sense. It fit the events well, right down to why Yusaku would have a deck ready to lend Chidori and why he had arrived so shortly after Judai. Only one detail caught the officers’ attention, and it happened to involve Yusaku.

And Ai.

The surging fear had made him feel hollow. 

“In the video, your duel disk seemed to turn into a...drone? Is that correct?”

“It’s custom-made. I have a drone license, and…” Good. No lies yet, but he needed to  _ keep going _ . “I want to major in electrical engineering. My duel disk is a project I’ve been working on.”

“How were you controlling it?”

“I have an app on my phone.” It  _ did  _ work, not that he had ever used it beyond rudimentary tests. Taking out of his phone, Yusaku swiped to the plain icon. “The drone responds to voice commands, along with movements I make on the screen.”

The officers exchanged a quick look, and this time, the other officer continued. “Alright, but I would advise against using a prototype like that in the middle of the city. Because of this crackdown on AI-operated machines, a bystander could mistake your drone for something pretty dangerous. Do you understand?”

“Yeah.”

The next delay was because of Chidori, and Yusaku, sitting on the edge of a bike rack outside the apartment building and watching the traffic drift by in indistinguishable shapes, repeated an exercise that his therapist had taught him. It involved taking deep breaths and then counting the seconds until he wanted to take his next one. Judai lingered in the background.

Eventually, a patrol car slowed to a stop, and a familiar girl with fly-away hair escaping its braid clumsily stepped out of the back. She was quickly followed by a woman with the same expressive face and grey eyes, likely a relative.

Neat, white bandages interlocked over Chidori's knees. She carried the deck box tightly in her right hand, the other used for support. 

"The trade's a bit messed up because the chip with my cards on it was confiscated, but I… I know it's going to be okay! Everyone is telling me that!" she blurted out, and Yusaku nodded. "I'm going home in a sec, and… If we don't see each other again, then… Thank you for helping me. I mean it!"

Wordlessly, Judai had slipped away, and that left her attention fixed on only him. He nodded again, and when Chidori held out the deck box with a toothy grin, he took it back. 

"It's still a trade," he hears himself say, quiet and distant. Taking the ball cap out of his pocket, he completed the exchange. Chidori wore it with the brim sticking up. He hoped that she would keep dueling. 

He hoped that the incident wouldn't cast a shadow over her.

He hoped that the words would form neatly inside of his head, because he  _ did  _ want to say something to her, and yet the syllables tangled. With Ai tracing new shapes over his back, he remained leaning against the bike rack as the patrol car pulled away from the curb and joined with the pattern of the city. 

\---

Although, Judai hadn't gone far at all. 

Fifteen minutes later, Yusaku found himself sitting across from the hero duelist in a dingy, wide booth on the second floor of the fast food restaurant. With both of his burgers finished and now represented by their matching crumpled-up wraps, Judai seemed content to pick at his fries and stare out the window, one of his arms carelessly thrown across the divider behind him. 

Yusaku kept one earbud in. Shouichi could need him. 

The situation could escalate. 

And it was as he tracked the various stains and scratches marking the table that Yusaku understood just how illogical his actions had been. Yuki Judai -- whose contact information he had been too distracted to get, in addition to other failures -- was their primary source of information on the Light of Destruction. Or, if nothing else, he  _ claimed  _ to know something about the force gripping the city. In addition, Judai was not human. Not entirely. Yusaku wasn't sure how to process that. It meant  _ something _ , possibly in relation to those notions of Light and Darkness, but-

Taking a deep breath, he made a list of three things. 

One. 

Yuki Judai did not seem like a malicious person.

Ignoring the complications of referring to Judai as a 'person', it was unlikely that Judai had helped Chidori for any reason other than kindness. Staging the event would have required extremely sophisticated coordination. More than that, if all of this really was a trap to gain Playmaker's trust and then turn on him (or, as a darker thought,  _ Ai _ ), the strategy itself seemed clumsy at best. It lacked precision. 

Two.

Yuki Judai was a strong duelist.

Based on his dueling record and his growing reputation among the standard duelists in Den City, Yusaku had already formed that conclusion. However, watching Judai take on an opponent had only strengthened it. In addition, it raised further questions about what powerful cards remained in his deck, each unseen card a different variable. 

Wielding Mirror Force, Revolver had revealed the power latent in older cards. Yusaku had read articles about how duelists in Den City tended to ignore ‘classic’ cards more than those in other regions, usually for the purpose of optimizing their signature Link Summoning style. His own preliminary research indicated that the Neo Spacian archetype revolved around Contact Fusion, a unique feature of its versatile fusion monsters, but there remained a crucial difference between understanding a playstyle in theory and experiencing it firsthand.

Three.

Yuki Judai had abilities beyond those of a human.

Whatever those abilities  _ were  _ was, as of that exact moment, extremely unclear. Those burning, heterochromatic eyes in orange-green were difficult to imagine on Judai now, the hero duelist wiggling one french fry in a ketchup packet and then frowning at it. 

“Man, I swear these things just get smaller and smaller…” When Yusaku said nothing, Judai glanced up at him. “Also, don’t tell anyone, but I’ll share my fries if you want some. Trust me when I say that this is pretty rare, like a lunar event. The planets align, and I offer my fries to my dear ally.”

“I’m fine.”

“...You sure?” Judai asked, tilting his head to the side. His shaggy hair fell out of place. “While I’m no expert, I got a feeling that just a soda isn’t a proper lunch.”

At that, Ai stirred. “Uh, yeaaaah. Not to switch sides or anything, buuuuut he  _ does  _ have a point.”

The negatives outweighed the positives, because Ai would definitely poke at him until he ate something and Yusaku didn’t have the energy to resist. The french fry was bland.

“You know, I’m noticing a trend here in Den City,” Judai said next, gesturing with one crooked french fry and coming extremely close to knocking his own soda off the table. Yusaku watched the container bob back and forth with morbid interest. “By the second turn, whoever I’m up against will start going on about how ‘outdated’ or ‘uncool’ my cards are, which…” Judai’s face twitched, his smile a little forced. “Maybe it’s starting to get to me. My fusions are  _ absolutely  _ cool. You agree, right?”

“I’ve only seen you use Air Neos.”

"Who...is very cool……?"

Yusaku stared at him, unblinking. "Is that actually important to you?"

"Well,  _ yeah _ ! My cards are my cards, so I gotta stand up for them!" Judai declared, and then he changed the subject. "Also, of course it's important. For one thing, you stopped frowning at the table, and I'm going to count that as a victory." 

Scoffing, Yusaku leaned back and crossed his arms, and while he addressed Ai next, he never looked away from Judai. "Check for bugs. Run a full sweep of both stories."

"Got it, got it!" Ai cheeped, and the duel disk rumbled slightly. Perhaps owing to Calamity, they were the only customers who had bothered to take plastic trays and eat inside. Regardless, Yusaku would not drop his guard. 

"You don't need to do that," Judai said, leaning his chin on one palm. "I'm keeping an eye on this place. ...Okay, not just  _ I _ , but...you get the idea."

Just ‘keeping an eye on this place' is different than searching for recording devices and other high-tech threats, which is what we're doing now," Yusaku countered, and although Ai was definitely distracted by the mechanical task of analyzing the various machines littering the restaurant, there was still a pleased hum in Yusaku's ear after he said 'we'. In hindsight, it had been a mistake to talk that way in front of Judai. It revealed too much. 

It must have. That was the only explanation for the pleased grin that spread across Judai's face.

"Your soul really is like my own. Or…  _ Our  _ own, I should say. It's more accurate like that."

"You're not making any sense."

"Ha… Well, then maybe your other half understands me."

The emotion must have showed through, Yusaku aware that his back teeth ached when he clenched his jaw, and Judai waved his hands quickly. It did nothing to change the tension. 

"Okay, my bad. It  _ might _ be hard to believe, but I'm not  _ actually  _ trying to light your fuse. I-"

"I don't know you," Yusaku stated. It was direct. And it was the truth, and also the crux of the problem. 

"Perhaps, although...that's nothing a duel can't fix."

"A duel won't give me the information I need."

"Hmmm… Are you sure about that?" Judai asked with a winning smirk. "A duel is a connection, and you might just find that, underneath it all, we're actually pretty similar. For example, I saw which deck you lent to Chidori earlier, and if our positions were reversed, I would have done exactly the same thing."

Yusaku had given her the dummy deck.

The exchange had been convenient, a method of keeping her  _ away  _ from danger while also keeping his own identity safe. It had also been deeply unfair. It had been a lie. 

When Judai tapped his fingers against the tabletop, they made only a dull, drumming sound. His nails were short and uneven, as if he made a habit of biting them down. Faint scars banded his knuckles. 

"There's a saying I learned in school. 'A duelist's deck is a duelist's soul.' Once you hear it, oh, a couple hundred times in lectures, it gets stuck in your head." Shrugging, Judai continued. "Still, the more I travel around and the more people I meet, the more I think it's true. So, if you want to ask me questions, then, sure, go ahead, although I kinda doubt you'll get the answers you  _ really  _ want."

At first, Yusaku said nothing back, Ai making a series of 'thinking' noises in his ear -- hums mostly, interspersed with bursts of, " _ Ah, no… That won't work… _ " or, " _... Right, right. So, what if we ask him first about… Uhh… _ ". Always, Ai carried with him those vague, delicate noises, all underlain with the various whirls and beeps of the devices he moved through. Without Ai -- for those dark months without Ai -- there had been a devastating silence. The quiet had compounded inside his head.

“The city is in danger, and it will stay in danger until those behind Calamity are caught.” And, letting his fingers trace the display of his duel disk, Yusaku took a deep breath, his resolve an unbreakable wire running through him. “But if we’re going to work together, you have to understand that there’s someone I must protect, and I’m not going to risk losing them again.”

A whisper of static, and then- 

“I… W-Wow, Yusaku-chan, I… Um.” Ai trailed off, prickles of his absent touch over Yusaku’s skin, running over his hands. Of course Yusaku wanted to be with him in that familiar apartment, or in the back of the food truck and listening to his friends start meaningless arguments while the hours drifted into one another. Everything he wanted was so deceptively simple on the surface, as if he were a kid again and wishing, earnestly, to go home. 

When Judai finally glanced away, a smirk began to wind across his handsome face. 

“Sure. Just promise me that you’ll give me a duel before all of this is over,” Judai said, and Yusaku felt himself scowl. Just a little. “While I  _ could  _ say some cool line right now about how I get where you’re coming from, that’s less, ah, effective than me just showing you  _ why _ I understand. A duel’s the best way for that, no contest.”

“Why?”

“Why?!” Judai sputtered, almost knocking over his soda again. Yusaku watched it wildly wobble back and forth. “Ah, man… You’re definitely messing with me. Not fair.”

“I’m not,” Yusaku stated, and before Judai could interrupt, he got to the point. “The Ultraviolet Project hasn’t responded to Ai’s messages yet, which means that the only information we have on the Light of Destruction is from the overview you gave us yesterday. To form a plan of attack, we need more than just that.”

Scrunching up his nose, Judai commented, “Huh. ‘Guess Saiou and the old man are pretty busy. ...Which means more work for me.” He sighed. “Alright. Ask away.”

“How did you stop the airship?”

With a snort, Judai picked up a fry and shoved it at the mangled ketchup packet. “I’ll admit, that wasn’t the question I was expecting.”

“You told us that the darkness opposes the light. You have also referred to yourself as an ‘envoy of darkness’. Therefore,” Yusaku concluded, arching an eyebrow, “if you have powers associated with this ‘darkness’, I should know about them so that I can accurately compare our strength against that of our enemy.”

“...Okay, maybe that whole ‘envoy of darkness’ thing was a  _ bit  _ too dramatic. But… Sure. Why not? It’s not even  _ that  _ long of a story. Maybe I can even get through it without going on a tangent about how a certain duelist should answer my challenge…”

“I’ll buy you a dessert if you hurry up.”

“...Woah, is Ultra-Stingy Yusaku-chan suddenly a thing of the past?” Ai wondered aloud. Yusaku did not privilege the question with an answer.

And-

And as the clouds visible through the grime-matted window cycled with the wind, Judai cracked his knuckles and began the story, a shard of green in his left eye hanging like an emerald pendant. The orange was harder to see, melding with the flecks of hazel and dark brown.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Card Games: The last card Judai uses (“Neos Support”) is something I made up just for the duel, which...yes, it’s rather lazy, but it also fits the penchant for Judai to use anime-only cards (e.g., Neos Single, Neospace Road, Neos Energy, Neos Spiral Force, Neospace Wave, and such). That’s my excuse, hahaaaa…..aaa…
> 
> Pot of Greed: I had, like, a massive argument with myself over whether or not to throw in Pot of Greed, but, hey, it’s not like it turned the tide of the duel. If it hadn’t been in Judai’s deck, he still would’ve got his fusion summon out (by drawing Neos Fusion instead, provided that his deck order didn’t magically change) and swung for the win. ...I can also say that the final card Judai had left in his hand is not Yubel. 
> 
> OCs: All OCs who show up are and will remain minor characters. Since I took an, err, anime-esque approach to the duel here, I needed some newcomers to get across what kind of duelist Judai is. ...Well, what kind of duelist this side of Judai is.
> 
> Next Chapter?: The next chapter should be a Judai-Yubel chapter! 
> 
> And thank you all for the comments!!! I appreciate them so much!!!! :D


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: this is the chapter where Judai's injuries are obtained. If you don't want to read the description of him being hurt, then read until Judai muses on "being a good alumnus" and then skip to the next section break.

\---

**< previously>**

_'Oh, this really isn't going well.'_

_'Yeah, yeah… Next time,_ you _recruit the local hero to our save-the-world quest while_ I _stay invisible and provide the commentary.'_

_'My dear, we both know that's not how it works.'_

At that, Judai couldn't help but smirk a little more, Yubel's own amusement flickering through him. Although, all things considered, he _was_ trying not to grin _too_ much because Playmaker was already giving him a scowly/frowny sort of look. The small figure balanced precariously on the duel disk's display -- Ai, as Winged Kuriboh had overheard and cheerfully hooted to Judai earlier -- also seemed less than _thrilled_ with the whole situation. 

So… Yeah. As usual, Yubel was right. 

This really wasn't going well. 

_'Hmm… So you've acknowledged that…'_

_'Hey, don't worry. I can still save this. I haven't used the full extent of my_ charms _on Playmaker yet.'_

_'My dear, challenging him to a duel now is unlikely to work out to our advantage.'_

_''Unlikely' doesn't mean the same thing as 'impossible', so-'_

_'If Playmaker wasn't glaring at you before, he definitely is now. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the new recruit and less to your loyal advisor."_

_'That'll be a challenge.'_

_'True, but you_ like _challenges.'_

_'Ha… I also like it when you distract me.'_

Again, there was Yubel's amusement, rippling down through his chest and sinking into him, and Judai absently rocked back on his heels and let his gaze drag over Fujiki Yusaku -- better known as Playmaker, who was both the unofficial hero of Den City and someone covered by a living darkness.

With Yubel's eyes, those shadows could be revealed, and they were threaded through the person in front of Judai now. They were coiled around Playmaker's left wrist and slipping, phasing, through the material of his duel disk. And while Judai wasn't sure if the _red_ string of fate existed, he knew that its less-vivid counterpart did.

A sight like that couldn't be an accident. 

Although, as a _slight_ negative, he wasn't one-hundred-percent sure what it meant, besides the obvious. Playmaker could only be a duelist of darkness. And, somehow, the gesturing avatar with those flashlight-like eyes was also involved, the strands of darkness all beginning at him and ending at Playmaker. 

Similar wisps of shadow with streaks of blue and grey ran between the holder of the Gentle Darkness and his eternal knight, and while they were normally a bit tricky to see, they became as vivid as chains when Yubel turned corporeal and Judai let his own darkness rise, his own vision overlain with a burning gold. The problem, as Yubel had explained earlier with a slight chuckle, was figuring out just how exactly Playmaker's soulmate could be a bunch of pixels. Or a computer program. App. Whatever.

Still, it wasn't _that_ pressing of an issue. Not like the whole 'Light of Destruction being set loose inside a major city' thing. Which was bad. Super bad. 

Also bad was how _guarded_ Playmaker's eyes were, meeting his own like plates of iron. 

_'Although, I do deserve it. I'm about to cause a lot of trouble for him.'_

_'We've discussed this.'_

_'Yeah, but…'_

_'Judai, focus.'_

“There haven’t been any new threats to Link VRAINS. The other virtual worlds also appear to be stable," Playmaker stated. In his rumpled school uniform, even the tie creased and a little crooked, he managed to appear both like an overtired highschool student (the kind who wouldn't bother studying, or maybe Judai was just projecting) and like the determined lead of an action series (the kind would who only wear an outfit like that for an undercover operation). Maybe both were true in their own way. 

And-

Oh. He _seriously_ must've zoned out that time, because with a small tsk of annoyance, Yubel moved their selves closer. They peered through his eyes.

"Oh, this is new. Never had someone ask me to confirm _which_ world is in trouble. The easy answer is that all of them are, including the one we’re in right now." When Playmaker's eyebrows scrunched up, shifting him more towards 'confused and possibly sleep-deprived student' and away from 'internationally renowned vigilante with a sick light-up jumpsuit'. Judai almost laughed, shaking his head as he exclaimed, "...Aaaand there’s the puzzled look!”

“Hey, Yusaku-chan,” Ai stage-whispered at Playmaker, with a quick (and sort of cute) glare at Judai, "maybe you should call school security."

Judai had opened his mouth, a finger raised for emphasis because, yep, the cult thing was _almost_ on the right track (although _his_ side wasn't the one with a history of brainwashing people and making them wear matching outfits like an overzealous pop group), but then there was a deep rumble from overhead, like a vast leviathan had uncurled from some ancient slumber. The sound made him throw his head back, Yubel's scales dancing over his arms and and brushing closer to their reality. 

Over the city, an airship was falling. 

A single word banded the screen on its side: black letters against a white slashed with grey-black noise. 

CALAMITY. 

_'Judai,'_ Yubel breathed, and when he clenched his hands, their claws -- intangible, for now -- ghosted over the raised tendons. Yubel was moving closer and closer, as if their blood was winding through his own veins, as if the split heart of a dragon and a warrior was beating inside his chest. 

He needed to go.

He activated his duel disk.

“Keep your head down. I’ll catch you later,” Judai said, Playmaker staring back at him, staring right through him. Screams were ringing out. Cars were screeching to frantic stops, and Judai wanted to give him a smile, because that's what the strong, reassuring heroes from his childhood comics always did, but the expression came out wrong. Too slanted. Too high. 

Too honest, revealing Yubel's too-long canines. 

Whoops.

And he took off, bolting across the street at a full sprint while the bones of his back changed their shapes, elongating and widening to support that explosion of sinews and spikes and muscles and membranes. He could imagine it like a countdown, rigid red numbers on a black background with the milliseconds displayed and rapidly flickering. It was close, Yubel _everywhere_ and galvanizing his own strength, everything that he could call _his_. 

Still, using Yubel's wings always hurt a bit. Well, a _bit_. He had passed out the first time, but, hey, practice made perfect, or however that saying went. 

Judai threw his weight down and jumped.

Zero.

 _Boom_. 

Not a real one, of course. It was an explosion of unfurling matter in purple-black and glittering gold-red, tearing through his skin and bursting through the gaps in his jacket -- two parallel cuts over his shoulder blades. And the wings tensed in the air, taking the wind and _using_ it. Arches of bone and muscle responded to their joined mind, and they gained meters quickly, the floors of the surrounding glass-and-steel towers passing in blurs like full-speed trains while he stood perfectly still on a platform. Only, the perspective was all wrong. 

Plus, it wasn't like he had time to take in the view, not when the airship was dropping far, _far_ too quickly. He called on the Gentle Darkness, and it answered with the pressure of a coming storm. From his cards, one hero emerged. 

Pitched forward, the airship was being driven down, and Judai, flying straight for it with blood roaring in his ears, threw his right arm out as a conduit for the darkness. Between his fingers, electricity sparked.

Storm Neos became real.

_'Go.'_

The hero was gone, taking off at an impossible speed and then -- without a moment of hesitation, without anything but an unbreakable determination that resonated with the Gentle Darkness and made it sing inside Judai's head -- Storm Neos slammed into the airship. A shudder of stressed metal, the supports around the nose and cabin groaning. Storm Neos pulsed its mighty wings once, Judai letting the sharp burst of wind carry him back in a loose spiral, and-

And the airship had actually stopped, suspended in midair while the hero gathered its power again. 

_'Let's go,'_ he whispered to Yubel, and he pushed forward with a flap of their wings, angling towards the cabin. Opening it _might_ require their claws, and-

_'JUDAI!'_

He whirled away, a dragon's deep growl rumbling beneath the screaming wind, and Yubel's pupils cut through his. They made him see the mess of cables and bulky shapes on the underside of the simple, rectangular cabin. 

If he applied the sort of logic used in big-budget action movies, then those could only be explosives, attached in somewhat-neat rows on the underside of the cabin. The wires trailed inside. 

_'We still have to go in there.'_

The rumble shook inside his chest, Yubel's voice rasping like a weapon being slowly drawn from a sheath. _'Judai…'_

_'Someone's in the cabin. You can see their shape just as well as I can. ...Unless that's a really unfortunate smudge on the window.'_

_'If you go in there, they might fight back. Desperately. Like a trapped animal.'_

_'Yeah, but I have you on my side.'_

Even as Storm Neos surged forward again, drawing out more of the darkness and using it, Judai could feel the slight break in Yubel's concentration, like a hitch in their breathing. A warmth sparked, delicate and small. It wouldn't be taken in by the wind whipping around them. If anything, the harsh conditions just made it grow, the start of an inferno flaring beneath his skin, sections over his ribs now interlocked with Yubel's raised scales.

 _'Love you too_ ,' he thought, their satisfaction another ripple of summer-warmth, and that's when he dove for the cabin, grappled onto its side, and forced the door open, the hinges screaming out. This was the scene where the hero from a big-budget action movie would've thrown out a one liner, the kind that would break the tension a bit and make the audience laugh (as if nothing could _seriously_ go wrong). 

Although, even if Judai _had_ come up with a heroic line, he _might've_ forgotten it when faced with the sleek, white-grey android propped up in the pilot's seat. Wearing a blue boiler suit, it could've functioned as a mannequin at a rather un-inventive clothing store. Thick cables in red and blue ran across the floor of the cabin -- at a sharp incline, enough to make Judai grip the doorframe. They ended at a rectangular box within the android's reach, the exterior a maze of metal, plastic, and glints of copper. 

The chance of him solving this with a duel was pretty low. Unless the robot happened to also be a dueling prototype. Robot. Android. Cyborg. ...Thing.

SOLtiS was probably the right word for it. It was a word whispered in the crowds that he had walked through while surveying the new city. It had been hissed at the mechanical baristas inside popular chain cafes.

Not that Judai understood the hate. His robo-barista had even given him a free refill with his coffee. _And_ a complimentary biscuit.

"Hey there. Not to bother you or anything, but you wouldn't mind tilting this airship up a bit, would you? I'm sure the people below us would appreciate it."

No answer.

Maybe this wasn't a talkative model. Shaking his head, the wind throwing his bangs back, Judai tried again.

"Ahh, you're going to make me say the magic word… Okay, okay. Would you _please_ tilt the airship back up again? Just for me?" As an extra bonus, Judai put on his best 'oh, sorry, I didn't _know_ you needed a different bus ticket for the return trip' smile. It didn't work at all. The SOLtiS didn't even glance over, not that it had eyes in the first place. 

Okay. Plan B.

_'Alright, Yubel. We gotta come up with a question that'll lead the robot to a logic-defying paradox, and then its systems will be overwhelmed. Bam, victory. Sounds good, doesn't it?'_

_'Or,'_ they began, their voice deep and rough, _'we could just rip its head off.'_

_'...Okay. But we don't know how the robot works. Maybe it'll self-destruct instead. Or send a signal to its controller that the mission's been compromised.'_

_'Your plan suffers from the same flaws. However, only_ mine _has the advantage of being very, very direct.'_

Being direct was important. Yubel didn't have to emphasize why, because the darkness was continuing to be drawn out of his body, every wisp of it necessary for Storm Neos to push the airship upward and away from the innocent people below. If Judai could compare the feeling to anything, then it would be to having his blood taken for a test. Only, he now was losing too much, more than enough to leave his head fogged. 

Of course, he hadn't taken a test like that since he was a little kid, one who had spent far too long going in and out of hospitals, experimental clinics, and, eventually, too-bright rooms with loud machines that had drilled holes in his memories. If he -- a fusion, inseparable -- took a blood test now, it would probably come back very strange. Or maybe Yubel's reflexes would block the needle, snapping it off on a purple-dark scale that would push over his skin in an instant. 

Yeah, the drain was getting worse, and, bracing himself with one hand, Judai stared out across the near-empty cabin. Too much about the attack remained unknown. A trained mercenary like O'Brien would've been able to assess the SOLtiS, determine what it was _really_ doing, and probably even pilot the airship. _And_ diffuse all of the bombs. With zero errors, naturally.

_'Ready, Yubel?'_

_'Yes.'_

Still, there were things only they could do, and Judai let Yubel's draconic claws bleed over his right hand, consuming his own fingers and knuckles and sheathing them under their hard scales. Dropping to his knees, he cut the wires. All of them. 

There were many possible outcomes. 

Consumed by a sudden inferno, the cabin could have burned under a reactionary denotation of the bombs, and Yubel would have been there as his armor, covering him with their jagged shadow and clutching him closer and closer. And even though they -- a coil of warm darkness, the embodiment of a summer's night and the day's moments of shade -- would have stopped all of the flames from reaching him, he still would have hurt from it, scorched by a deep guilt because, yeah, he _always_ did this. He always found new ways to make Yubel become a shield. 

_'I don't mind. If I_ did, _you would've heard about it by now, my darling Judai.'_

 _'Ah, let me worry about you a_ little _. If I'm lucky, you'll start finding it charming.'_

_'Unlikely.'_

Even the SOLtiS had remained in that rigid position, its arms like two brackets over the control panel. Artificial fingers were molded around the controls. And although a high-ranking fusion like Storm Neos could have summoned enough wind to gently lower any debris to the ground or, the brute force option, hurl said debris into the bay, it was a net positive that the airship hadn't turned into a very large firework. 

_'Okay, so anyone else who boards the cabin should be...safer. Not_ safe _because we don't know how the bombs actually work, but-'_

_'Judai.'_

_'There's gotta be something else we can do, although provoking the robot is… There are way too many trap cards. I need a field clear.'_

_'Others are coming this way. We have to go.'_

Featureless, the SOLtiS faced the front window, the sharp breeze that wound through the cabin making its collar sway back and forth. It remained a blank slate. A void. Even with Yubel's eyes, he found nothing but the white of its coating and the faint streaks of teal light from its marker.

Damn. 

_'Don't make me repeat myself,'_ Yubel chided.

Just for occasions like this, he kept a balled-up scarf in his pocket, and he paused only to wrap it around the lower half of his face, securing the knot as he let Yubel's wings unfurl, catch the wind, and yank him backwards and out of the cabin. For a moment, he entered freefall. 

The world was only blue and grey. 

And then he struck out, the wings shooting down and making him rocket upwards, past the airship and far above the fleet of buzzing drones drawing over the city like ravens. The rotors of a military-grade helicopter beat heavily, the shape of the vehicle a smudge that widened with the passing seconds. Drawn to it, Judai whipped around to stare back at the airship again, now almost level and rising slowly. Unless the universe had changed its rules, the first people who boarded the cabin wouldn't have anything to save them -- absolutely, undeniably save them -- if the bombs went off. 

And so he waited. 

With his focus steeled, he waited -- flitting high above the gleaming towers and settling, rarely, on the top of one for a beat, clinging to its metal rivets and watching with unblinking eyes. An ignition would mean heat, maybe enough for Storm Neos to sense it and react in time. Or maybe not. 

The chill of the air made his throat tight.

Faster than the helicopters, a VTOL airplane darted close to the airship, and it was soon joined by a second one that breezed through the cloud of orbiting drones. Wires shot out and grappled onto the metal cage of the airship, and the steady drip of the darkness from Judai's hand weakened, Storm Neos drawing less energy as the planes took on some of the burden.

And yet, he felt a different kind of cold, separated from the ice of that exhaustion because, no, no _way_ had he taken out this threat. Small drones zipped in and out of the cabin, likely surveying it for the personnel in those planes. Gaps could exist. They remained on a precipice without wings. 

_'I shouldn't have left.'_

_'You_ had _to, and you have to recall Storm Neos.'_

Yes, the airship was rising. Yes, Storm Neos could finally start to let go, although-

Pushing off a spire, he circled closer in a wide arc. The exhaustion became an icicle between his ribs. And then it sharpened. 

And then his wings crumpled.

_'JUDAI!'_

As the fire in his chest, Yubel cut through everything else -- the tumbling maze of the spinning city, the whistle that rang in his ears as he plummeted story after story and closer to the pavement. They forced the wings down, strained muscles working beyond their limits and pushing him _up_. Yes, it hurt, enough to make black spots crowd his vision, like hundreds of phantom drones clustered together. It didn't matter that it hurt. 

The connection with Storm Neos had become only a drip, like blood from a shallow cut. 

_'Judai, you can't protect everyone.'_

_'Yeah. Call it a bad habit.'_

_'They're specialists. They know how to deal with threats,'_ Yubel stated firmly, their _everything_ curled around him. And he wanted them to be right. 

With the world around him in streaks of blue, he wished for that.

Judai let the storm fade, the presence of that hero drifting away and out of this reality. Far below him, the gleaming towers had started to thin out, Den City's outer districts in a patchwork of residential blocks, building sites, and open plazas below. With some luck, no one would notice his landing on an unfinished apartment building. 

...on that note, _maybe_ it was finally time to stop accepting those jackets that the chancellor kept sending him each year. Yeah, being a good alumnus was important, especially for his favorite dorm, but the red _did_ make sneaking around kinda difficult. 

Then again, that was also his colour. 

Decisions, decisions… Weighing the pros and cons acted as a nice distraction, for a while at least. Below him now, the unfinished building resembled a vertical jumble of chicken wire, and although he had been here for, oh, two-and-a-half days rent free and seemingly undetected by the Light's forces, Judai had, in all honesty, never _really_ wondered what the architect's Ultimate Vision would be. Considering the 'abandoned' vibe of the construction site, the remaining vehicles thrown around like toys by an annoyed toddler, it seemed pretty likely that, well, maybe that Vision would remain just an Idea. 

And yet, when his wings gave out again and became like sheets of loose paper so thin that they shredded in the wind, Judai found himself with a very, very intense close-up of the building, whether he wanted it or not. 

He didn't know the specific name for the interlocking metal beams that made up the majority of the building's exterior. Whatever they were, they hurt. A lot. 

One had done a pretty good job of trying to ram its way through his right side, stopped by a net of scales made from what darkness had remained. He had drained so much of it. And still Yubel -- a hiss in his ear, inside his head -- was knitting his tissues back together, was making his body _work_ even though it shouldn't have. Not when he had gone over all limits. He could taste blood. He could see it pooling over a line of metal, giving it a copper sheen. 

Yeah, okay. So red was his colour.

Just not in such a _morbid_ way. He liked sunset red. Cherry-popsicle red. Campfire red, cascading out with flickers of orange and yellow. Stuff like that. 

For a long time, he remained where he had fallen -- clinging to a frame of unyielding metal with bared claws while slowly lifting himself away from the part that really, really hurt. Each breath was a part of this sadistic game. Each roll forward of his chest made the pain twist.

To someone on the ground, he must've looked like a daredevil who, after climbing at least seven stories, had _somehow_ managed to impale himself on a pointy bit of Building, with a capital 'B' because the structure now felt very, very significant. It would have a special place in his memories, as most other buildings (lowercase 'b') did not take an active part in trying to rearrange his internal organs. 

The force of Yubel's concentration made him shiver. Their thoughts thickened into a haze. 

_'I have you. You're with me.'_

Judai felt himself smile, his eyelids heavy. The metal was forced back, and -- with Yubel whispering a reassurance, an _'I love you'_ that used different words -- he could eventually haul himself up and onto a horizontal metal beam, the wind dragging lines of cold across his nose and ears. He leaned back against a support column, the streets below splayed out like the cross-section of some impossibly complex machine. Cars traversed it like electrical signals relaying an alien message.

People could have been hurt. In the time that he was _out_ because an injury he should have been able to avoid, the airship could have-

_'Dear.'_

"You think I would've gotten the hang of this vigilante stuff by now," he said, letting his hands go slack. One hung over the edge. "Maybe we should start keeping a running tally of how many times you've saved me. It'll be like one of those yogurt cards. After ten saves, I'll throw in a prize."

_'I see your sense of humor wasn't damaged in the fall.'_

"Try not to sound too disappointed," he replied, and next was the first brush of Yubel's knuckles over his forehead -- tangible as their form flickered in streaks of purple and gold. The breeze carried their scent. "You know, I've fallen asleep in a lot of weird places, but those places are usually on the ground. ...Today is...a chance for new experiences, if nothing else."

_'If you want to sleep, then sleep. I'll wait for you.'_

Again, the ridges of their knuckles passed over his skin, warm like stones placed next to a fire, and Judai leaned into them, following their path. And then the world slipped away, leaving only the faint pulses of Yubel and their firelight, beating in the center of the growing dark. 

\---

The stars were out. 

Their patterns sharpened as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes, and it was a good sign that when he coughed, the responding ache from his rib cage wasn't _quite_ enough to make him pass out again. 

Note to self: summoning a triple Neos fusion (a tall order by itself) and using said fusion to stop an airship was _already_ hard enough without the addition of blunt force trauma. And not-so-blunt trauma. 

His jaw was also stiff. 

_'You have a bruise. It's very heroic.'_

_'Ha. Good to know that you're into the roughed-up look.'_

Yubel snorted, and their breath washed over his cheek. Their armored plates clinked together as they leaned back. _'The wound has healed enough for me to move you. Come here.'_

Blinking, he stared up at Yubel, crouched over him with the night draped over them like a cloak, obscuring the exact colours of their scales. Unfurling, one hand moved over his shoulders, and another dipped down to the small of his back, carrying with it a brittle heat. One weakened by the layers of armor between them.

Yubel had once described themselves as the perfect fortress, a blade-like smirk turning their full lips as they had gestured at the spikes flowing from their dark scales. _'Of course, I'm not purely defensive,'_ they had drawled, and the flash of humor had been enough to make the angles of their face soften, the contours of it glow. 

Corporeal, the sections of armor varied -- some fluid and bending with the gentle curves of Yubel's body and others set in hard, metal-like fortifications over thick muscle. It didn't matter if it was a thousand times. Or a million. Or more, because every facet of them was, to him, completely and absolutely loved, a truth that bound the both of them together. Embodied by the trailing shadows, by those eternal threads. 

And, yeah, Yubel's gaze could be useful for seeing through illusions, following too-quick actions, and magnifying small details, but above all else, it was _this_ sight that was his favorite thing. Them looking back at him. Their lashes -- half dark as charcoal and swooping low and half just thin wisps of fragile smoke-grey -- framing the burning colours contained. 

_'You're going to make me blush,'_ they stated, all sarcasm, and Judai snorted. He let Yubel start to lift him, his arms heavy and limp. Not-thinking about his side was, so far, the best strategy, although the persistent, knock-like aches complicated things a bit. 

_'Ha… I think this is called a 'bridal carry.''_

_'It doesn't matter how politely you ask. I'm not going to put on a suit.'_

_'...Stop reading my mind,'_ Judai ordered, somewhat pathetically, and their laughter was around him -- the sound low, matched by the slight rumble of their chest as they pressed his head against their breast. It wasn't a position that he would complain about. Ever. _'You're spoiling me, carrying me around like this. I could get used to it too easily.'_

A quick laugh, their eyes bright. _'To compensate, I'll make a point of dropping you rather carelessly.'_

_'Ahhh…. So mean….'_

Yubel flew with far more grace than he did, the first pulse of their wings something he could see rather than feel, and with their faultless ease, they navigated down through the unfinished layers of the building. And Judai, leaning more against them, closed his eyes again. He listened to the rasp of their breathing. 

Exactly as he had left it, his 'camp' was spread behind a section of wall on the second floor, and, blinking to stay awake, he felt Yubel lay him on the blanket. They were more than gentle. When their wings tightened, the membranes creased with a slight noise, like newspaper being neatly folded.

_'Can you get me my phone?'_

A grumble, more 'annoyed cat' than 'fierce lion'. _'Just rest, darling.'_

_'Hey, you could search up today's news for me. That'd be easy, right?'_

_'...Yes, because my relationship with technology is_ anything _but adversarial,'_ Yubel stiffly replied. While their claws had never scratched Judai, Yubel _did_ have certain, err, hang-ups with modern touchscreens. Expensive hang-ups that confused repair techs ("Did...you let a bear use this?"). And even though Judai could hear the annoyed little clicks of their tongue, they did pluck the phone, thick anti-drop case and all, out of the jacket pocket on his 'hurt-y' side. 

Getting the voice recognition system (program… app… thing…) to read out the headlines for Den City took a couple tries, Yubel's grumpy snarls almost making him chuckle (which increasingly hurt, his adrenaline just ashes rather than a blaze). But-

The bombs had been deactivated, according to a spokesperson for the new task group.

No casualties reported. 

Without a word, Yubel dropped the phone into his bag. Even though his eyelids were heavy, Judai looked at the blank expanse of the ceiling -- in darkness, showing nothing.

_'There's...such a thin line between the hero who rescues people and the idiot who charges in and messes everything up. When I first realized that, I had already crossed the line. I was alone in a pit on the other side.'_

_'If you try to rationalize everything about this chaotic world, you'll find yourself disappointed,'_ Yubel remarked, brushing his bangs away with the barest contact, a breeze of claws and dragon scales. He smiled. 

_'I think I've never actually been on the 'good' side of that line. Maybe I've had a foot over it sometimes, or even just a big toe, but that doesn't count.'_

_'This self-pity doesn't suit you.'_

_'Ah, sorry sorry.'_ With grey spotting his vision, he let his head loll to the side, and Yubel drifted closer again. He wished for their touch, and they responded with a kiss to his jawline, above the bruise. Heat unfolded over his skin. _'Still, I'll need all of my luck to get out of Den City with, ah, 'good results.''_

 _'Oh?'_ Yubel murmured, loose strands of hair drifting over his face. Another kiss. _'What secret plans have you been keeping from me?'_

_‘Nothing major. But with any luck, we’ll find the Light of Destruction and take it out before it can start to spread. Maybe if we’re fast enough, I won’t have to recruit Playmaker at all. I can just forever be that weird guy who bothered him on his way to school once. That’s not so bad, is it?’_

_‘It’s unlikely for the situation to be that simple. Saiou was right -- the organization is overwhelmed. We need allies, and Playmaker is on the side of justice. He’s wrapped in his own form of darkness.’_

_‘Yeah… I can’t argue with you at all. And yet…’_

_‘What is it?’_

Plated knuckles rounded his cheekbones. _‘It’s this feeling I’ve had ever since we came here -- someone around me is going to be hurt,’_

_‘You’re worried that person will be Playmaker. Fujiki Yusaku.’_

_‘He was scared today. Very scared.’_

_‘Considering what happened, most people would be,’_ Yubel responded, and then they leaned closer, their cheek against his. “Go to sleep, Judai.”

And it would’ve been impossible not to, the steady rhythm of their breathing pulling him further and further away. Although, the last image he had was of Playmaker standing in front of him with an absolute, undeniable focus behind his narrowed green eyes. This was before the airship had plummeted down, while Winged Kuriboh -- worried, and more puffed up than usual -- had quietly warbled in his ear about how _quickly_ Yusaku had tried to hide earlier.

Fujiki Yusaku had been afraid, and not only of obvious things like a vehicle falling from the sky above a populated city. Judai could recognize the pain even though it had been hidden away; sometimes Playmaker’s hard stare had flickered into something strained, almost desperate.

Yes, Judai had recognized the pain. Of course he had. 

In another dimension, the weight of loss had almost crushed his heart.

\---

After two-ish years of traveling around, Yuki Judai had gotten pretty used to sleeping on the concrete floors of abandoned factories, uneven ground littered with stray pine needles and tiny, pointy rocks, and various spare futons that were always offered apologetically. While he wasn’t immune to it, he also didn’t _usually_ wake up with a sore back or a stiff neck unless something went incredibly wrong. Or unless the futon he had used belonged to a certain Marufuji Sho (that same futon, he had theorized, was _probably_ cursed by a God of Discomfort).

That morning, as the hum of a city’s morning began to filter into the near-empty space, Judai did hurt. A lot.

Although, for a nice distraction, the first thing he saw when he cracked his eyes open was a stone-faced Yubel glaring down at a pretty brave cat, which had plopped down in a gap between the unfinished walls. When it yawned, swishing its orange-white striped tail through the air, Judai couldn’t stop himself from making a comment. 

“It’s cute that you’ve made a new friend.”

A ruffle of their wings. _‘’New friend’ is quite the exaggeration.’_

He sat up, wincing as he did. “Since Pharaoh’s been at Saiou’s place, we’ve been missing the cute animal mascot for our group. Maybe this is a chance for a new recruit."

 _'Or not,’_ they answered inside his head, a shadow of a smile turning their lips -- a soft teal, the colour thin over the grey wall beside them. Because animals had heightened senses for all things spirit-related, the fluffy basketball of a cat could track Yubel’s now-translucent form far better than most people. Pharaoh, usually with a warning ‘yowl’, had made the occasional game of swatting at Yubel’s wingtips. 

Because Pharaoh and Daitokuji-sensei were sort of a ‘package deal’, Saiou’s request for the alchemist’s expertise meant that Judai’s clothes were less fur-ladened than usual, not that he had ever minded that. Still, it was good knowing that Pharaoh was, at that very moment, hanging around a laboratory with his master and probably shedding all over some ridiculously expensive equipment. Well, either that or leaving hairballs in people’s shoes.

On the subject of shoes, his own boots had been taken off by a mysterious entity (likely one about two-meters in height, with split purple-white hair, and sporting a charming little scowl). Dragging the boots on caught Yubel’s attention, their image shimmering as they turned and arched a judgmental black eyebrow ridge at him.

“Just running to the store. You want anything?”

 _‘I’ll let you know if I think of something,’_ was the deadpan reply, Yubel’s lip curling a bit. _'Must I state the obvious?'_

"Last time I checked, I'm almost out of painkillers, and," he added, brushing his palms over his jeans, "I'm already losing the motivation to find a pharmacy. Time is of the essence. ...At least, I _think_ that's the saying."

Yubel snorted and said nothing.

The next task was rather...complicated. While going out in public with toothpaste on his collar, Pharaoh's hair ringing his pant legs, and a couple of twigs in his hair was totally fine, the current state of his shirt was a different matter. Holes too big even for his lax standards. And too much dried blood.

He changed it as quickly as possible, Yubel's tangible hands intercepting his own. His decision seemed more and more like the wrong one after he stood up and took an experimental step forward. Everything swayed a bit too much.

When he collapsed on the stairs down to the first floor, clutching his side, Yubel caught him. Changing the shirt had been a total waste after all, fresh drops slipping under the hem and hitting the stairs. Hopefully no one would notice the marks. Well, no one besides the still-curious cat who had watched the entire exchange and then, echoing Yubel's own grimace, grumbled in disapproval. 

Yeah. Judai had experienced better Saturday mornings than this.

_'What are the chances of a delivery person just showing up with painkillers and breakfast for me?'_

_'Hm. I think you need to stop at least two more airships for that service,'_ Yubel murmured back, already at work with the contents of the first aid kit strewn over its lid. With the darkness running so thin, the wound needed some help, that help involving Yubel delicately cutting strips of bandages and applying them swiftly, knowingly. 

_'None of the headlines yesterday even mentioned Storm Neos or a 'mysterious figure' stopping the airship. I sure hope Storm Neos wasn't waiting to get the spotlight. Disappointment like that can be hard to take.'_

_'It seems as though the emergence of a new enemy can overwhelm that of a new hero,'_ Yubel observed.

_'Yeah… I understand. ...I'm also now out of clean shirts.'_

_'Maybe that same delivery person will take pity on you.'_

_'Ha. Maybe.'_ With a final tug at his shirt, Yubel leaned back, leaving him flat on the blanket. He caught their wrist before they phased away. 

_'Hey, thanks for dealing with my stubborn side for the millionth time. I'll make this up to you.'_

The gauntlet was smooth there -- the copper-brown segments flecked with a deep gold that flashed when they moved. It was beautiful, and, careful not to upset the neatness of Yubel's work, Judai angled his head forward and pressed a kiss to the ridge of their knuckles. The strands of lingering darkness looped over Yubel's claws like rings, like wisps of grass that would scatter if Judai pressed his lips slightly lower, kissing his way down one of Yubel's fingers. 

He did continue, letting his eyes slide shut, and they shivered slightly. It made him grin, probably like an idiot. 

Definitely like an idiot, considering how Yubel then sighed and muttered, "Oh, darling, whatever am I to do with you?"

"Right now, you can protect me from the deadly threat of this neighborhood cat."

Said cat had advanced to rubbing one furry cheek against Judai's leg, and Yubel, after watching it for a beat while a threatening aura gathered over them, let out a deep, rumbling sigh that only a creature of legend being ignored by a three-kilogram fluffball could make. 

**< /previously>**

\---

Although, Judai _did_ leave a few details out of the story. Like the moments of self-doubt. And the somewhat-graphic descriptions of what it felt like being skewered by Building. 

And anything that gave away _too_ many details about the duel spirits (he couldn't hand over his foolproof how-to-track-Playmaker technique, not _yet_ anyways).

And the cuddling with Yubel (hey, private stuff was private!). 

The dented soda container in front of him added to Playmaker's general 'overtired teenager' look, as did the too-big hoodie, the disheveled fall of his bangs, and his slight frown. Sure, Playmaker had asked a few questions, all focused on how certain abilities worked, but Judai would still classify him as 'surprisingly quiet' for someone who had just been informed that, yes, the guy sitting across from him could fly. And summon Duel Monsters into this world. 

Usually, that was only for emergencies. 

...Okay, _maybe_ Sparkman had charged his phone a few times before. But not that many. 

No more than five times. 

In contrast to Den City's famous hero, the little avatar of Ai had been, well, _alive_ during the story. Always moving and reacting with big 'WHOOPS' of surprise, Ai’s responses had been impossible to ignore -- not that Judai was the type to brush off the chances to make some quick jokes. In a strange way, Ai reminded him of an over-the-top arcade game, the kind ringed with flashing lights, decked out with all sorts of tiny, moving things, and, above all else, constantly bursting with those loud exclamations of sound. 

“Huh? Is that it?” Ai blurted out next, peering up at him from the duel disk, where the avatar was cross-legged and rocking back-and-forth like an over-excitable preschooler during storytime. "Well, that only gave me...even more questions than before. What about you, Yusaku-chan? Should we- Woah!"

Getting up from the booth, Playmaker seemed to make a point of glancing back at Judai, who was trying (seriously, _actually_ trying) to appear…'Good'. Ideally, he would come across as 'Trustworthy', but -- a consequence of being a duelist and therefore a strategist -- he did acknowledge that, yeah, a bond like that wouldn't come easily. 

They really should have dueled by now. No matter what, the fall of their cards would change them both.

Although, even a master-level duelist could be caught off guard, which was Judai's excuse for just blinking in response when Playmaker stiffly asked, "What do you want?"

A beat passed, and then Yubel took pity on him, crooning in his ear. _'For your complimentary dessert, my dear.'_

Oh.

Right.

"Uh… Surprise me," Judai said, the judgmental tilt of Playmaker's eyebrows not improving, and Ai dramatically 'whooped' and flailed his arms around when, duel disk and all, the teenager pivoted on his heel and walked away. 

_'...Hmm. I have a new premonition, and it tells me that I'm about to get the cheapest thing on the menu,'_ Judai sent to Yubel, who, sympathetic as always, made his chest rattle with their rich laughter. _'Plain ice cream. One scoop.'_

_'So, would you say that you're being treated coldly?'_

_'No, but… Wait. Was that a pun?!'_

_'Was it?'_ they asked with a giggle. It was a giggle, no other word coming close to describing it. 

_'...Yeah, I'll keep this in mind for the next time you complain about_ my _sense of humor. So, watch out. It's a perfect counter,'_ Judai warned, earning him another set of tingly, fast-moving giggles, and he munched on a sorta-cold fry with a sense of victory. A small one, yeah, but he'd take what he could get. 

After all, Playmaker (or probably even Ai, for that matter) could've ordered with one of the screens attached to their booth. Or with the official app for this chain. A strategy meeting was likely being conducted, with himself as its main subject. 

_'Playmaker will come around. Persistence is the key.'_

_'Is 'persistence' a fancy word for 'dueling'?'_

_'If that's how you choose to interpret it.'_

One fry had become three fries, then four. And then he had finished the whole pile. Drumming his fingers on the dingy table, Judai craned his head back, peering through the weather-streaked window and into the city outside. Cowering, the few duel spirits that bobbed and swayed after the few pedestrians seemed to have their colours faded, desaturated. Intertwined with the ebbs and flows of this world, they mirrored their duelists' own fears and anxieties. With proud wings, a fantastic hawk shielded one business man as he stepped off the sidewalk and hurried across an empty stretch of the street. A cat spirit circled her duelist -- an older woman slowly hauling a bulging shopping trolley behind her -- with an arched back, her feline ears flattened. 

Admittedly, Judai hadn’t figured out how digitized cards interacted with duel spirits, and yet there was no denying that the connection remained. Even without a physical card, a pint-sized dragon whelp had flown after the would-be thieves from earlier that day, thin curls of smoke escaping its tight jaws and its tail lashing violently at the air. So, yeah, Chidori must’ve been good to her cards to earn the dragon’s respect, a respect that could last for lifetimes. Extending on and on.

_‘Ah, there’s your poetic side…’_

_‘Romantic, isn’t it?’_

_‘’Charming’ is the word I would use,’_ Yubel observed, cadence smooth. Balancing his chin on his knuckles, Judai felt an easy smirk turn his own face. Den City was very interesting, _still_ interesting even if he removed the enigmatic figure of Playmaker from the picture.

Playmaker, someone spoken of by the local duelists with the hushed whispers of awe and deep, honest respect.

Before Judai had connected the dots (so to speak) between the virtual and the actual, he had assumed Playmaker’s real self would be… Well. A super nerd. Like, a ‘Misawa Daichi’ level of nerd, which wasn’t negative at _all_ but it did involve a lot more advanced math than Judai ever, ever wanted to do himself (the moment equations started using letters instead of numbers, Judai was out). 

As his real self, Playmaker was more subdued than anything Judai had (foolishly, rashly) assumed he would be. Sometimes, Playmaker seemed like a warped and distorted mirror, the smudged pieces of a very different and very _alone_ Yuki Judai segmenting his unique features. And now-

The solemn, restrained boy with the vibrant green eyes was now cutting a straight path across the faded linoleum tiles of the chain restaurant, the duel disk at his side sparkling with rainbow lights as the pixelated figure on it continued to twirl and gesture widely -- a dark tornado in miniature. And in this place that was simultaneously dull and colourful (so many blinking screens reminding Judai to download the app! And register for an account to get a free coupon!), Playmaker was an image from somewhere else that had been cut out and pasted onto the ill-fitting scene. His angles were too different. His colours clashed with those around him, and a darkness ran in thick streaks over his left arm. It was coiled and so very alive. 

_'An enigma wrapped inside another enigma,’_ Judai thought, meeting Playmaker’s stare.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Judai's Powers: season 4 opens with Judai and Yubel fused following his use of Super Polymerization. Admittedly, I’m running pretty far with the idea of Judai being not-exactly-human anymore. Judai being able to summon Duel Monsters can also be (briefly) seen in the BBT movie, as can Yubel shooting a fireball. I figured it'd be good to make a note that /some/ of Judai's powers here are based in canon, as the 4Kids dub doesn't make it to season 4. 
> 
> Judai's POV: well this was an adventure and a half. When Judai is referencing feeling sad and alone, I'm thinking specifically of the isolation he feels in season 3 following the fight in the arena with Lord Brron. His heart being 'crushed' is in reference to the emergence of the Supreme King. 
> 
> What's Next?: obligatory comment about how this chapter exploded and left me trapped in its wreckage (aka it turned out to be very, very long, so long that I've cut it into two chapters).


	7. Chapter 7

\---

“Food. My greatest weakness,” Judai drawled as Playmaker, his mouth in that ever-present 'frowny' line, stopped by the booth. In the gaudy yellow-on-red cup was what  _ looked  _ like a chocolate-vanilla shake. With sprinkles.

Sprinkles meant friendship, right? 

“We should go,” Playmaker said, revealing nothing as he stoically handed over the cup and stepped back. A frosty reception indeed.

( _ ‘Please don’t think I missed that,’  _ Yubel murmured in the background.)

“Hmm... You got a hot dog craving?” Judai asked, adjusting the straw and making the shake’s colourful swirl...even...swirlier. Because, apparently, his small-talking skills were in the  _ negatives  _ by now, Playmaker took his comment (aka the prediction of their next location, and therefore a prediction of some step in Playmaker’s new gameplan) with a slight wrinkle of his forehead and a pointed glare. Great. Awesome.  _ ‘Yubel, maybe you should  _ really  _ do the talking for awhile…’ _

_ ‘Yes. Because people typically react well to hearing my voice coming out of your mouth.’ _

Yet again, Yubel was right.

“The bus leaves in six minutes,” was Playmaker’s reply, and before he could turn, Judai started getting the words out.

“Hey, I'm sorry for setting you on 'high alert' all the time. I’m not trying to, and...yet I keep doing it! The fact is, I  _ want  _ to be your ally, and I get why that would be tough on your end when I keep...putting my proverbial foot in my proverbial mouth.” Good so far, with Playmaker watching him carefully. “Also, I gotta thank you for today. A part of me...hated having to leave Chidori behind like that, and I could see how she appreciated you being there for her.”

“Just don’t call me your sidekick. Ever.”

Oh, Judai  _ had  _ to laugh at that, ducking his head a little. “Sorry, sorry. I was caught up in the moment. ...How about we just get the bus and forget about my, ahh, ‘awkward phrasing’?”

With the swirlier-than-before shake in one hand, Judai had started to clamber out of the booth, and yet Playmaker remained where he was -- his shoulders in a tired slouch, his open hoodie close to dipping off one shoulder. The urge to playfully ruffle his hair was way stronger than it needed to be. Judai (quite wisely, if he could flatter himself) decided  _ not  _ to. 

Apparently, Playmaker was a master of confusing him with questions that  _ sounded  _ straightforward and yet did the same thing to his brain as those complicated math equations with way,  _ way  _ too many letters and squiggly lines.

“Do you need more time?”

Judai opened his mouth and then...paused. Words. He needed some, preferably  _ not  _ the upbeat-yet-also-sarcastic ones that his brain kept feeding him. “Unless someone’s managed to swipe my deck in the last couple of minutes, I should be good to go,” he said, throwing on a ‘please ignore my invalid student ID and hopefully give me the discounted rate anyways’ smile. Despite how specific it sounded, it had many possible uses.

Although, it didn’t seem to help out here, because then Playmaker let out a frustrated sigh and passed one hand over his forehead, the fingers tensed. Ai, with a small warble, peered up at the duelist in concern. 

“It…” Stopping, Playmaker sighed again, a tiny scowl appearing and then being controlled. Judai waited. “When you went against the thieves earlier, you had to move quickly, and with your recent injuries, maybe there’s a problem.”

Oh.

_ Oh _ .

“You think I need to rest up,” Judai said, and… Damn. His smile went big and ridiculous. “Tell you what. I promise to get a good night’s sleep to make up for today, but only if it’s on your couch. ...Just...maybe don’t drag it outside. ...Not that you would be so cruel to your dear ally, right?”

“Right,” Playmaker replied, deadpan. And, without another pause, he started for the stairs down to the first floor, leaving Judai to make up the gap with a half-jog. Not that he minded. If anything, the ‘must ruffle hair’ urge had gotten even stronger. Basic manners won out though. For the time being.

\---

Before the bus came to a nice and timely stop by the plaza (the one that Judai had mentally dubbed ‘Hot Dog Plaza’ for obvious, meat-product reasons), the blunt sweetness of the shake had given Judai an energy boost, meaning that Yubel, with a barely-concealed amusement, got to tease him about ‘bouncing around’ in his seat or, on more than one occasion, throwing a ‘gotcha’ gesture at a rather-confused-looking Playmaker. For his part, Ai’s suspicious little glares had turned into outright accusations of, quote, ‘flirting with  _ my  _ Yusaku-chan!’.

Flirting? No. 

Slightly-teasing-in-the-hopes-that- _ maybe _ -Playmaker-would-feel-the-need-to-duel-him? Yes.

Seriously, Manjoume would have challenged him at least 100 times by now. Although, that wasn’t a good metric, since Manjoume would challenge him to a duel if he so much as looked at the Ojama duelist and, like, dared to exist.

“-and he’s sleeping at your  _ place _ !”

“That was your idea,” Playmaker corrected stiffly, leaving Judai to grin at his back while his ‘argument’ (a joking one, naturally. All the inflections too light, too familiar) with Ai continued on. Setting a quick pace, Playmaker took a straight, efficient line from the bus stop to the inconspicuous food truck bordered by empty tables and a set of massive viewing screens. No one lingered to watch the flashing news reports. The few people they passed walked quickly, their heads ducked.

_ ‘Yeah… We should do some more recon today,’  _ Judai directed at Yubel, who purred their agreement. 

_ ‘Hmmm. Do you believe that Playmaker will approve of our strategy?’ _

_ ‘Weeeeell... That...has yet to be determined.’ _

With a chuckle, Yubel then folded into the deeper recesses of his mind (their twin minds, more accurately), and he could feel them more like...as if he was holding a heat pack with a winter glove rather than standing in front of a bonfire. It was comforting in a different way, the  _ possibility  _ of them growing closer again present and powerful. It was a latent heat, a subtle heartbeat.

“-and so we both agree that I’m waaay more handsome. Right? ...Right? Right?!”

“Ai.”

“H-How can you leave me in such terrible, gnawing  _ suspense _ ?! Does your cruelty know no limits?!”

“Do you want to sleep on the desk tonight?” Playmaker asked, his tone so wonderfully dry that Judai, still a few steps back, had to slap a hand over his mouth not to interrupt with his own cackling. Who knew Playmaker was so devastating  _ outside  _ of a duel as well?

Ai, a puddle of black-purple-yellow pixels slooshing over the display of the duel disk, whimpered in protest. “So, it’s come to this… Going from buying couple’s pajamas to sleeping next to your dirty mousepad. The downward trajectory...is undeniable.” 

“We’ve never bought pajamas together,” Playmaker said, lowering the duel disk, and Ai’s grumbles trailed off into an unhappy static. At least, until Jin opened the sidedoor of the truck and threw a wave at their group. "AH! Jin-chan!  _ He’s  _ on my side! Just you wait, Yusaku-chan, I’ll show you how I-”

“No new leads?” Playmaker asked, interrupting Ai and making him wilt in place. A perfect OTK.

“Nope. I would’ve called you if we’d found anything,” Jin replied, stepping out of the truck and stretching his arms. Briefly, he cast a knowing look at Judai, and then he added, “Also, your friend -- the one with the boat -- is still ignoring us.”

To that, Playmaker said nothing, and when he entered the truck, he leaned back to address Jin on a different subject. 

“Are you taking a break?”

“Yeah. My eyes have this...ache, like someone tried to squeeze them,” Jin explained, making a gesture alarming enough to get Playmaker’s eyebrows to go up by a few centimeters. “I’ll be out here for a bit. Let’s catch up later.”

Although he hesitated for a beat, Playmaker did take a babbling Ai inside, which left Judai blinking at Jin -- who was currently sipping from a take-away coffee cup while twisting his hair out of its low ponytail. 

"Well," Jin began with a tired grin, "I guess I can interrogate you. It might be kinda fun."

"Fun for...which one of us?" Judai asked, tilting his head to the side as Jin led him to one of the many free tables and took a seat. "Oh, wait. I get it. You know, you don't have to be shy about it."

"Shy about  _ what  _ exactly?"

"You," Judai began, taking his own seat and leveling a finger at the scruffy and rather sarcastic person across from him (both were traits that he liked, after all), "want to see my cards again. Now, don't be embarrassed, since these  _ are _ -"

"Why would I want to do that?"

Tabletop, meet Judai's forehead. "So blunt. So  _ direct _ ," he muttered at the weather-streaked wood before bouncing up again. "I'm sure it'll take those guys awhile to...finish whatever they're doing, so we definitely have time for a duel, if you're up for it that is. Maybe you'll fall for my cards once you see 'em in motion!"

Unphased, Jin stared back at him, blinked once, and then said a sentence surprising enough for Judai to bang his knee against the underside of the table. 

"I don't play Duel Monsters anymore."

"Oh. No problem! I probably have enough spares to make a second deck. Heroes versus heroes sounds exciting, doesn't it? Actually,” Judai commented as he flipped open his deck box and started sorting through the contents, “it’s been awhile since I fought against heroes.” The last time had been a ‘no stakes’ game versus Edo that had felt more like a tournament final, the younger duelist eager to throw out taunts and fast, direct hits -- not that Judai couldn’t take them, of course.

Unfolding part of the cup’s rim, Jin didn’t meet his eyes, and Judai let the cards remain in their little somewhat-organized groups, his attention shifting. Like Playmaker, Jin seemed to favour all things baggy and kinda worn-out, the collar of his purple t-shirt stretched and sagging. The dull half-circles below his storm-grey eyes had already been there yesterday, and Judai felt like he should make a somewhat-teasing, somewhat-concerned comment about all the caffeine. Eventually. Later, after Jin’s gaze wasn’t so...absent. Spaced-out.

When Jin lifted his chin, the look hadn’t changed. “To be honest, I have no interest in dueling. It’s…” Shrugging, he picked up the cup, turned it, and put it down again. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I know the rules. I’ve even won a few tournaments online. Not in Link VRAINS, but it’s not like  _ all  _ duelists have to play there.”

“Ahh… You must be pretty good then,” Judai drawled, leaning forward. “Maybe if you try going in VRAINS, you’ll meet Den City’s top hero. I’m sure a match like that would, ah, change your perspective.”

“...You’re such a Playmaker fanboy,” Jin muttered, cracking a teasing smile, and, hey, Judai would take it. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the shirt you’re wearing.”

“...Would it help if I mentioned that it isn’t mine?”

Jin rolled his eyes. “No wonder Ai’s so jealous.”

With a quick flick of his hand, Judai collected the main contents of his deck -- Neos on the very top, the portrait a whorl of blue and white as he flipped it over. “What kind of deck did you win with? That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“The last tournament I won with a Noble Knight deck. I structured it around Arcana Extra Joker, a Link-3 Light monster with 2800 attack. I’ve also played that card with a Poker Knights deck. ...It might sound pedantic, but even though I won all of my matches, the aesthetic of those decks doesn’t suit me at all. Knights are fine, sure. Still, something more like...centurions would stand out more.” Pausing, Jin considered the cup for a moment. “This is the part in the conversation where my brother gave me a seriously weird look and then pretended to be very interested in a pack of frozen hotdogs. So, did anything I say raise a ‘red flag’ for you?” 

“Not  _ really _ ,” Judai admitted, wincing a bit. “To be honest, I’ve never even heard of Arcana Extra Joker, only Arcana Knight Joker, which, for the record, I’m contractually obligated to like because it’s a fusion monster and I’m starting to feel like a representative for the card type in this link-obsessed city. Also, it goes without saying that I support any and all warrior-type monsters as well. You got good taste, in my not-so humble opinion.”

“Hmm…”

Waving a hand, Judai continued. “I’m sure the whole thing is just a misunderstanding, and I hope it doesn’t keep you away from dueling if you’re passionate about it, which it  _ seems  _ like to me. I take it that you were into Duel Monsters as a kid too, right?”

Jin snorted, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “I guess so, since…” Blinking, his stare refocused on Judai. “Oh, right. You don’t know about it, do you?”

“...No?”

“I have gaps in my memories,” Jin said plainly. “They don’t prevent me from keeping new memories, so don’t worry about me forgetting how ‘duel crazy’ you. Therefore, if you want an honest reply to your question, then I can’t actually give you one.” And that’s when Jin shook his head, his smile amused. “It’s very telling that you looked _way_ more surprised when I said I didn’t want to duel. It’s official -- ‘duel crazy’ might be too light of a term for you.”

Well,  _ true _ , but-

“I get it,” Judai stated with a nod, and Jin’s look turned ‘skeptical’ in an instant.

“You sure about that?”

“...Sort of? W-Well,” he quickly added, Jin switching from ‘skeptical’ to something involving more nose wrinkles and the beginnings of a grimace, “I underwent these procedures when I was a kid that made me forget about certain... _ things _ . Let’s just use that general category for the sake of, errr, ‘simplicity’. Anyways, I’m not implying that my experience is the same as yours or anything like that, but I...might get it more than someone else would, so…” He made a hand gesture. 

Jin had straightened, and the silence of the plaza thickened around them both, the screens cycling through tips for citizens to ‘Improve Their Cyber Security’. The crows remained watchful, but that was all -- as if they too had noticed the panic gripping so many of the people here. Or maybe even that of the translucent duel spirits: a serpent in gilded green winding through a silver business tower and then curling through its outer walls.

“You didn’t have to tell me about your past, Judai. I wasn't trying to force you into a 'trade' like that, and I’m sorry if I pressured you at all."

“...I’m a stubborn guy. It’s hard to make me say things I don’t  _ actually  _ want to,” Judai replied quickly, daring to wink (and a somewhat groggy Yubel then gently reminded him  _ why  _ people mistook him for a flirt. Whoops.). “Plus, chances are that we’re going to be teammates as of today, so awkward childhood stories are a possible topic of conversation. ...Trust me, things on my side get  _ really  _ weird once highschool starts.”

“Considering that you went to a school funded by the world’s most eccentric billionaire, located in the middle of the ocean, and at the center of many internet rumors and possible missing persons cases, then… Yeah. I buy that,” Jin concluded, and he rolled his eyes again as Judai tried not to laugh  _ too  _ much. 

“Ha, Kaiba should put that on the brochures. It’s more accurate than what the  _ actual  _ slogan is.”

And, from there, they settled into a rhythm -- the tensed, closed sheen over Jin’s eyes slowly fading like a streak of bad weather, and with Winged Kuriboh perched on his shoulder and humming softly, Judai could almost believe that this was a scene  _ after  _ the bad guy had been identified and defeated, not before. That reality made all of this so much harder.

The persistent, creeping feeling had only settled in deeper -- someone close to him was going to get hurt. He could brace himself against it. He could be as logical as he wanted to, but, hey, it didn’t matter. The feeling had fused with his bones. It had gained its own unique weight.

“You could at least put up a fight,” Jin observed as the display of his phone erupted into red hearts and confetti -- a sign that, yes, he had won the second round of their ‘duels’ with a quiz app, one that Judai was starting to suspect had an actual  _ grudge  _ against him.

Before Judai could try to tactically,  _ skillfully  _ navigate the conversation back to card games, Jin hit the orange ‘rematch’ button and, without glancing up from the screen, strung together a rather confusing collection of words. Clearly he and Playmaker were close. They had the same devastating ability, after all.

“We were so panicked at the beginning. I’m only starting to realize the extent of it now.” 

“...And I’m starting to suspect that you’re _not_ talking about the quiz,” was the answer Judai went with, and he couldn’t keep the frown off his face when the first three categories were, in order, Ancient History, Modern Inventions, and Physics. “Although, I gotta admit, if I bomb for a third straight time, my worldview might become a lot more bleak. ...You’ll go easy on me, right?”

“If you followed the news on Thursday, barely any time was spent discussing the person or object that stopped the airship. Instead, so much energy was being directed towards the  _ possibility  _ of it falling,” Jin explained, and when he slid the phone across the table, Judai could see that he had aced the first category. Theoretically, Judai could do the same. ...Theoretically. “If you look online, everyone is speculating on what  _ else  _ the hackers yesterday could have accomplished, which is important but risks ignoring the reality of what  _ actually  _ happened.”

“Yeah, I agree. At the same time, you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Judai commented airily, tapping his way to a solid 1/3 for Ancient History. “Any good strategist has to push the limits of their own perspective, and sometimes that involves considering a lot of negative outcomes.”

“...Nicely put.”

“Ooh, don’t sound so shocked. I’m more than just a pretty face.”

Jin ignored that. “Maybe you can guess why, but I don’t want to become obsessed with a worldview that just magnifies the negative possibilities of the past and obsesses over all the things we  _ don’t  _ know. I want to believe that there’s still something productive we can all do, even if I’m not able to contribute much myself besides...some basic programming and coffee.”

“Don’t forget that you’ve kicked my ass at this app for the past fifteen minutes. That counts for something,” Judai added, flashing a smile, and Jin scoffed. 

“I doubt the leader of Calamity will challenge me to a trivia contest.”

“You never know which skills will be useful later on. I can’t even count how many times dueling has gotten me out of a pinch.”

Judai had just breezed through Modern Inventions with a 3/3 (using luck and skill in...somewhat-equal measures), and that’s when the food truck’s door ‘clicked’ open, a signal that had Yubel floating up to the surface of their consciousness again. Before he could throw out a cool one-liner, Jin had already pocketed his phone, grabbed the empty coffee cup, and gotten up with a quick wave. “Hey guys. You need anything?”

If anything, Playmaker just looked more 'Playmaker' than before -- tired, rumpled, and likely one misguided comment away from giving Judai that extremely effective frown. Other people (Sho, for example. Or, the unrivaled master,  _ Johan _ ) could wield the devastating power of 'puppy dog eyes', and yet some cruel deity had given Playmaker an even sharper weapon -- that terrible, terrible frown. Ai, in stark contrast, seemed to embody the word 'bubbly', right down to the upbeat 'Yoo-hoo!' he threw out to Jin.

"We should talk," Playmaker said, doubling his greeting as a suggestion. It was probably a suggestion for Jin to join the 'Let's Talk about Judai!' club. 

Jin shook his head. "It's okay. I'm sure that you and my brother have already made the correct decision."

At that, Playmaker's 'Playmaker-ness' increased. His eyes narrowed at the corners, almost cautious. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah, it's no problem," Jin replied, shrugging. "So, what's our next step?"

Ai chirped up with, "Let's just say that it's time for our, ah, latest  _ initiate _ to show us what he's got."

\---

Apparently, fitting two young adults, two teenagers, and one  _ extremely  _ opinionated AI in the back of a converted food-truck-slash-secret-tech-base was...a logistical challenge, one that left Judai hovering a bit awkwardly by the closed door while the collected members of Team Playmaker all looked at him with varying degrees of interest. Eventually, Ai mimed clearing his throat, struck a leader-esque pose, and began. 

"In light of your recent comments, we here at Team Playmaker have collectively decided that  _ proof  _ of your supernatural powers is necessary for our continued cooperation. Now, I should warn you that a lack of sufficient proof will be grounds for me to advocate for your permanent expulsion from these grounds. Oh, and I'll banish you from Yusaku-chan's couch. I'm even prepared to use force, so take this seriously, okay?"

"We never said anything about force," Playmaker corrected, adjusting the duel disk with the start of a grimace creasing his features. Then, with a flare of intensity, he looked back at Judai. "I can't afford to waste any more time because of indecision."

Judai understood, and he nodded. "So, what do you need from me? Not to criticize this set-up, but I can't  _ exactly  _ fly in here. ...Not without breaking some things, anyways."

"You wouldn't happen to fly with a pair of wings, would you?" Shouichi asked from one of the desk chairs, his eyebrows raised. And… Yeah. That was correct.

_ 'Without adrenaline to mask it, using my wings will be painful.' _

_ 'Normally, yeah, but it's only been a few days since the last time.' _

_ 'That shouldn't make a difference,'  _ Yubel observed, curtly enough that Judai felt his grin twitch.

_ 'W-Well… I have a chance here to get Playmaker to  _ like  _ me. It's worth it. I can do this.' _

A grumble, deep enough that he could imagine Yubel's top lip curling up to reveal their fangs. Although, no argument followed, and that left Judai only with one course of action. A straight, no-nonsense plan.

"As long as this stays between all of us, I'm down for it," Judai said, and Ai exchanged a quick look with Playmaker, the avatar snapping into a tensed, almost defensive pose. Like his brother, Jin had his arms crossed, his gaze unreadable. Some level of doubt was fine. That would just make the reveal all the more exciting, and -- rolling his shoulders back, feeling the components shift and build to a satisfying 'crack' -- Judai took one step forward. A little more space was necessary, after all. 

He started slowly, his hands loose at his sides while two twin daggers of bone forced themselves to become real, their matter rearranging the delicate tissues and muscles that bordered them. Although, starting slowly had been a mistake, which he realized abruptly when bone first connected with bone and pushed and  _ pushed  _ until it was moved aside, and… Yeah. He switched to a 'band-aid' approach. Rip it off quickly. 

He suppressed the flinch. 

The wings unraveled and burst through the holes in his jacket, their nerves and bones and muscles all all reactive, completed, and connected. Membranes folded effortlessly between the bones that framed them, curved so gently underneath the rippling dark of Yubel's leather-like protective skin, and, for Judai, stretching them once was enough to release their tension. As he let them close behind his back, the multitude of small, infinitesimal commands and responses all flowed together into something intuitive, something  _ easy _ .

About seventy percent of the yelling had come from Ai, the remaining percent split pretty evenly amongst the startled brothers. Playmaker, of course, had kept his cool, and Judai couldn't help but smirk at that, Yubel's own purr of approval sliding through his mind, warming him.

_ 'Ah, so he  _ did  _ believe you earlier. That's nice to know.' _

_ 'I can confirm it now. The sprinkles meant friendship,'  _ was Judai's reply, and Yubel chuckled at it. Any further communication was interrupted with… Reactions.

“Okay, either that’s an  _ impressive  _ mod to a Solid Vision projector, or… Or it’s  _ not _ ,” Shouichi declared, and he leaned over to get Jin’s attention. Some rapid blinking occurred as Jin switched targets, his grey eyes wide. “Hey, do you think there’s a market for flying hot dog deliveries?”

“I’d rather use a drone instead,” Jin replied, sardonic enough for Judai to laugh. Ah, so blunt…

Playmaker was also rather blunt, stepping forward with that determined stare. Although, Judai filled in the question that was hanging in the air, since he didn’t mind either way. “If you suspect there’s a chance I’m tricking you with a holoprojector, you can touch a wing. ...Or two. Trust me, I won’t take it personally.”

Those eyes flickered over Judai’s shoulder.

Okay. More encouragement was needed, clearly.

Rocking on his heels, Judai let one wing spread itself back, the farthest edge scraping the door, and then he curled it forward, the wing a folded swirl of black and purple that bracketed his right arm. “If we go after the Light of Destruction together, chances are that we’re going to be dealing with things a  _ lot  _ stranger than my, ah, ‘living situation’, and some of my answers to your other questions probably can’t be proven this easily. ...You get where I’m going with this, right?”

“It’s a trust exercise,” Playmaker stated, deadpan. He looked incredibly not-impressed, as if Judai had just blissfully informed him that, yes, all link monsters were being converted to fusion monsters in the next five minutes. Ai was also very consistent...in his own way.

“Ooo, I’ve seen  _ more  _ than enough dramas to recognize the introduction of a love rival when I see one! The flashy abilities! The constant  _ banter _ , and- And don’t think that I’ve forgotten about all those… Those finger guns at Yusaku-chan on the bus!”

“Finger guns?” Judai repeated, since the ‘Gotcha’ gesture was  _ completely  _ different, and he would have said more, hoping to form a sentence good enough to stop the bouncing avatar from declaring all-out war on him, but then his senses were prickling with a disturbance, a presence that had moved too close. It was like the hollow bones of Yubel’s wings wanted to suddenly rattle, to chime out in a warning, and yet… And yet it was just Playmaker stretching one hand out with visible restraint, the movement slow and stilted, as if Yubel’s curled-up wing was actually an intimidating neighbourhood dog and Playmaker was the determined schoolkid trying, respectfully, to give its head a pat. 

Judai really had to do something about his overactive imagination -- it made him grin like an idiot far,  _ far  _ too often.

The first contact between Playmaker’s spread fingers and the purple-black sheen of the wing’s protective skin could barely be felt, dampened by the layers of tightly-woven armor, although Judai’s already-crazy grin widened all the same. Hey, progress! Actual progress, and he watched as, with a tiny frown and such clear,  _ clear _ concentration, Playmaker gently followed the wingtip’s shape a few more centimeters before breaking away. He stepped back.

“See? Not a big deal,” Judai commented, the wing slipping back to its usual ‘rest’ position over his back. Ai, clearly, disagreed -- huffing loudly and crossing his avatar’s arms. After a chiding look down, Playmaker continued to be, well, blunt. 

“You can also summon Duel Monsters.”

It was a statement, not a question, and Judai nodded quickly. “Yeah, but since I’d rather not, errr,  _ redecorate  _ this lovely headquarters of yours, I’ll choose a...smaller member of my team. If there are no objections, of course.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Playmaker waited for input from the others. Jin only shrugged, and Shouichi waved one hand loosely before replying with, “Hey, he promised not to wreck the truck. What more can I ask for?”

Next, Playmaker lifted his left arm. “Ai.”

“Y-Yeah? Oh. Uh, I...have no issues with any of this, aside from what I’ve already mentioned about our newcomer’s general  _ proximity _ .”

Wordlessly, he lowered his arm again, and he met Judai’s stare. It felt like a signal, so Judai took it as one -- a spirit within his deck was already buzzing with energy, after all. Taking the card, he turned it once between two fingers.

“Ready, buddy?”

Inside his head, Winged Kuriboh hooted in excitement, and the spirit -- in all its fuzzy, fuzzy glory -- popped into existence over the card. Both Playmaker and Ai tracked the motion (as if Judai really needed further proof that the AI wasn’t  _ simply  _ an AI), and Judai, humming to himself, decided that, yeah, throwing Winged Kuriboh down in attack mode would  _ definitely  _ be cooler than defense mode. Activating his duel disk, he did just that. It took no effort. In rivulets, the eager darkness moved, and with a flare of the rainbow summoning effects, Winged Kuriboh rose from the card’s fibers, angelic feathers soft under the artificial lights.

“Oh, it doesn’t look all that different from a hologram- OH. OH, WAIT, IT’S REAL,” Ai eeped out as Winged Kuriboh flapped its wings before hooting in greeting. A nice, cheerful greeting that had zero effect on Playmaker’s dear partner. “How the-? You… You can’t just  _ make  _ matter appear out of  _ nowhere _ ! There are laws! Natural laws! I… I don’t- Gah!”

Winged Kuriboh eagerly ‘booped’ its forehead against Playmaker’s raised hand, which made sense. Kuribohs liked other Kuribohs...and the duelists that took care of them. When Winged Kuriboh dipped down to nudge at Ai, some chaos ensued, and Judai had the unique privilege of seeing a very rare, very small smile tug at the corners of Playmaker’s mouth. It made him look so much younger. Calmer.

“This is weird,” Jin observed while Winged Kuriboh, energized, spun in circles by the circling. “Yeah, Saturdays are usually when we get that retired guy who wants his hotdogs with, like, ninety-percent mustard and ten-percent hot dog, but this? This is...probably breaking a few laws of physics.”

“Thank you for agreeing with me,” Ai blurted out at maximum volume. “I’m glad that someone  _ else  _ is alarmed by our ‘not-so-local expert on mooching off Yusaku-chan’ suddenly, you know, creating  _ life _ .”

“That’s not it,” Judai said, and  _ then  _ he had the attention of three humans, one AI, and one fluffed-up Kuriboh. He smirked. “While I’d like to take the credit, the truth is I’m not  _ that  _ talented. The Gentle Darkness just lets me...interact with duel spirits more strongly than other people can. I mean, Winged Kuriboh is always there. We’re friends, after all.”

“The Gentle Darkness is what gives you this ability,” Playmaker said.

“Yeah, it helps me out with duel spirits.”

“But your wings are because of your partner, Yubel.”

Oh. A trickier subject.

_ ‘Should I be offended by that form of address?’  _ they taunted, and he almost giggled at that. Almost.

_ ‘Hey, hey. I’m trying to respect your, ah, ‘reclusive’ habits. Still, we can’t blame Playmaker for being curious -- I did leave a lot about you out of my story.’ _

_ ‘Perhaps too much.’ _

_ ‘Alright, alright… Point taken.’ _

"Yubel's shy, especially with crowds," Judai explained, earning him a scoff. "But trust me when I say they're listening."

"So Yubel is like a duel spirit?" Jin asked.

“...Err. Sort of.”

_ ‘We might need an hour to address that, minimum.’ _

_ ‘Wouldn’t a duel cover it?’ _

_ ‘Judai.’ _

_ ‘...I gotta keep trying, don’t I?’ _

With a flurry of keystrokes, Shouichi completed a search that Judai had already guessed the subject of. The name  _ was  _ unique, enough for an experienced duelist to remember it. Not that any search would tell the whole story. 

A familiar portrait appeared on the nearest screen, Yubel a dominating presence in the colours of deep shadows. With their arms tensed at their sides, they stared out through the fibers of the card, through the pixels of the screen. Spikes in pure black flanked their contours -- some powerful, with muscles raised, and others soft. Their third eye was a flame of yellow and red.

"Some of my hunches are good ones," Shouichi drawled, and the words caught Playmaker's attention, Ai perking up in quick succession. "Out-of-print, with the physical copies going for some serious cash. Level 12. An effect monster with zero attack and defense. More importantly for our purposes, the card art backs up your story, Judai."

"Their wings are the same," Jin stated, and Playmaker slowly moved back, standing in front of Judai with one absent hand passing over the duel disk's domed display. The stare shifted down, Playmaker’s fingers tensing, raising slightly.

"Ai."

"Yep?"

"I'm going to take your suggestion from earlier, if you still think it's the correct action now."

"O-Oh! Oh, yeah. Definitely," Ai declared, mostly a voice while Playmaker's fingers shuttered his avatar, as if Playmaker was trying to feel something through the hard matter of the display and stray arcs of pixels. “It doesn’t look like Calamity’s made their next move yet, and no info has been leaked about the dirigible and its investigation, not that we, as a collection of law-abiding citizens, would be concerned with that. Ha. Haha. ...Anyways,” he quickly continued, “it’s been, oh, roughly five weeks, three days, and two hours since your last somewhat-serious duel, and  _ that  _ was with a cyber criminal who had… Anyways, to get to the point, we might as well use this time to sharpen up your skills, with the extra-efficient bonus of giving you the  _ opportunity  _ to put this newcomer in his place! After all, we’re in  _ your  _ city!”

“It doesn’t matter where we are,” Playmaker replied, something about the tone different as he relaxed his hand, the palm shifting over the smooth, domed surface, and then his stare was back. And it was intriguing. It was locked on Judai -- the acquired target who was more than just  _ thrilled  _ by what he saw. “Fine. I’ll give you a duel.”

Oh.

Oh, that was  _ great _ , beyond  _ amazing  _ actually, and Judai could barely contain the energy rattling its way through him, bubbling higher and higher. “You sure about this? Not to, ahh, sabotage my chances, but you seemed pretty worn out earlier, and one of the best parts of dueling is getting to go all out.”

Playmaker’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to hold back.”

_ ‘Ha… This guy. This  _ guy. _ ’ _

_ ‘He’s completely serious about this, and the confidence is...admirable.’ _

Angling higher, the smirk only widened across Judai’s face, and pulses of Yubel’s fire were in his veins. “Trust me, I wouldn’t want it any other way. If you’re ready to throw down, then so am I.”

Unblinking, Playmaker watched him, an unknown and unyielding force behind his hard stare. And-

“W-Wait?! Here?! In the back of the  _ food truck _ ?! No way!” Ai yelped out, startling Winged Kuriboh who let out a series of jumbled hoots. “Yusaku-chan, you gotta reconsider. Contrary to your earlier statement, location  _ matters _ , because, like, how can you go all out if you’re constantly bumping into the hot dog crew?! Or this...fluffball?!”

"We'll use the VR rooms,” Playmaker stated.

Closing Yubel's card page with a distinct 'I'll deal with this later' look, Shouichi stretched his arms over his head and commented, "That's the right decision. After all, the person Judai wants to duel is Playmaker, and he's the hero of Link VRAINS. I'm sure Jin and I can hold down the fort until the two of you are done, which, no offense, shouldn't be long at all."

"Hmmm… I wouldn't bet on that," Judai drawled. "Besides, Jin has more faith in me than that, riiight?"

"Sure. Let's call it 'faith'," was the sarcastic reply, and Judai caught the glances that passed around Team Playmaker -- all lively, all warm in their own unique ways, with their own shades. When Winged Kuriboh chirped and bounced a little, a grin ghosted over Playmaker's face, almost shy. The moment was brief, because Playmaker had been taken in by the same intensity, the same prelude to what would be a perfect clash. 

_ 'So, I'm the underdog here,'  _ Judai thought, Yubel's laughter a molten curl over his heart.  _ 'Well, I gotta say… I like it.' _

_ 'Win, Judai.' _

_ 'Oh, don't worry. I plan on it,'  _ he replied, and Playmaker, with an absolute, visible calm, stepped towards a wall panel and opened the first of the VR rooms. The darkness over him had tightened, segmenting his arm like chains. Or like armored plates, suitable for a warrior.

"Let's go," Playmaker said, and Judai nodded. 

"Yeah. Let's."

\---

The inside of a VR room was less, err, futuristic than he had expected. At first glance, it looked like he had trapped himself inside a large metal drum, although the crackle of Jin's voice broke the rather-anticlimactic illusion. As did the update from Winged Kuriboh, who he had left happily floating around the inside of the truck and, judging by the volume, had progressed to bonking its furry, furry head against Jin's headset.

"Woooooo!"

"Hey, don't cause  _ too  _ much trouble," Judai said towards the metal interior, and his voice must've carried somehow. More hoots followed, as did a deep sigh from Jin.

"Okay, since we're throwing you on a guest account, you’ll see a bunch of menus pop up in a second. You can swipe through most of them, since I'm anonymizing your data on my side. As a bonus, I'm also outfitting your character with the ‘privacy’ mod, which means you'll be invisible to most players."

"Ah, that's a shame… I'm good at firing up a crowd."

"...Sure," Jin replied, that one word containing enough skepticism to make Judai choke. "You'll need to declare your deck first. Take the cards out of the deck slot and put in your finalized deck."

"... Promise not to tell Playmaker what my cards are?"

The bubbly laughter was from Shouichi, joined by a playful scoff from Jin.

"Yeah, cross my heart."

A 'few' adjustments were needed -- Judai humming to himself as the familiar cards fell into their new places, each one the embodiment of a possibility, a chain of reactions. Although, when he inserted the modified deck, there wasn't the usual 'click' of the cards being locked in. No, apparently VRAINS duelists were flashier than that, as immediately the display began to spark with pale red lights that clustered to form a message. Stark, simple, and exciting -- INTO THE VRAINS. 

_ 'I gotta say, Den City has style,'  _ he thought, Yubel a crackle of sound, and then the lights were  _ everywhere _ , glittering over the plain walls and giving them depth and texture and  _ interest  _ as the metal was consumed by the waterfalls of vibrant colours. They poured down, the flooring below his feet suddenly covered with streams of red tiles and patterns of overlapping hexagons, some bordered by text reading 'LOADING -- GUEST SEQUENCE'. This reality was being submerged, bit by bit.

And...then there were menus. Lots and  _ lots  _ of menus.

As it turned out, closing them was a matter of  _ literally  _ swiping at the individual windows, which, hey, was pretty cool. 'Interface Options'? Boring. 'Graphics and Monster Settings'? Nah. 'Identification and Appearance'?

Now,  _ that  _ was important, and Judai cracked his knuckles. 

"Okay. I'll need a second here."

"...Don't take too long. Ai can be pretty impatient," Jin said.

"Hold up. Did you mean 'Ai can be pretty impatient' or ' _ I  _ can be pretty impatient'?"

"If you ask another question like that, then both will become true," was the quick reply, and Judai, tapping 'CONFIRM' next to his display name, cracked a smile. 

"Sorry, sorry. But you know that a hero's outfit is crucial to their impact," he explained with a shrug, and… Well, that next menu was a  _ lot  _ more complicated, so complicated that the word 'PREMADE' appeared in a side menu as a beacon of light. Or, at the very least, a nice piece of convenience (he  _ did  _ have a duel to get to, after all!). 

Although, tapping around revealed that  _ this  _ category was just as complicated as the main page, with its own submenus branching off into many, many  _ more  _ submenus, and Judai decided that this was a situation where, clearly, going with his gut was the best option. He tapped some buttons at random, and-

It was official.

His gut was a  _ genius _ .

_ 'Yubel, is this real?' _

_ '...For better or worse, yes.' _

_ 'I… I can't  _ not  _ do it,'  _ Judai decided, absolutely  _ giddy _ from looking like a certain… Oh, right. Better confirm it first. "Hey, Jin?" he called out, waving at the no-longer-present ceiling for emphasis. "In the game, I'll have the appearance of whoever I pick, right?"

"If you're using a premade skin, then yeah. It should include a voice modulator as well."

"... I'm going to lose it."

"Excuse me?"

"N-Nothing," he squeaked out, poking at the portrait with a certain amount of amazement. Link VRAINS was officially great. He understood the appeal  _ completely _ , even before he had taken one step within the virtual world. 

_ 'Try not to let this distract you from the duel…' _

_ 'I'll need to borrow some of your strength for that.' _

_ 'Unlikely.' _

"Well, I'm ready to go," Judai announced, throwing out a 'thumbs up' at...somewhere. Something.  _ 'No matter what, this duel is going to be great. I'm so hyped.' _

_ 'Try not to get caught up in any...roleplaying.' _

_ '...I hadn't considered that. ...Yubel?' _

_ 'Yes?' _

_ 'I'll need a  _ lot  _ of your strength to get through this.' _

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Team Bonding Time: ...I did write a duel. It’s hard to save the world if you can’t trust the new guy, after all. Next chapter! This chapter cuts here to account for the POV change (we’re going back to yusaku). 
> 
> Jin: I wanted to have a light-attribute warrior link monster for Jin’s deck for...comparative reasons, since I also wanted to at least engage with the echoes Lightning has left behind. While Lightning’s Armatos Legio monsters are Cyberse, not warriors, they do have a warrior-esque aesthetic. Judai’s childhood memory loss is revealed in season 3 of GX, and, if nothing else, I wanted the characters to connect on that. Jin’s mastery of trivia comes from his vague recollection of having watched a lot of tv. Which… same. Same dude.
> 
> Judai: Yes, sprinkles do mean friendship.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CARD GAMES: Judai uses yet-another made-up card here (Brave Hero Spirit), which is based off a few anime-only cards from GX. I should also state that the Speed Duel rules in this fic are only /loosely/ based off those from the VRAINS anime, since I wanted the fun of everyone on D-Boards but grappled with some of the restrictions. ...Writing duels is...a real challenge for a scatter-brain like myself. @_______@

\---

"I'm impatient!"

Ignoring that, Yusaku tilted his head back to watch the massive, rippling shifts in the digital wind above -- the clouds high over the cliffside oscillating between pale blues and seafoam greens, their colours broken up by the gleaming magenta trails left behind by duelists on D-boards. 

Ai, buzzing with energy, continued. "Oi, Yusaku-chan, wanna bet how long he'll last? Two turns? Three turns!?"

"No."

"Ah, come on. I'll throw in a free SOLtiS backrub if you outwit me on this one. ...Okay, two backrubs! Two!" Ai insisted, jabbing his outstretched fingers towards Yusaku's avatar. It was not persuasive, and Yusaku shook him off. In the distance, a new ribbon of magenta curved, and, like the iridescent inside of an opened shell, the central hub for VRAINS rested below. 

"I'm not interested," he said to Ai. Without looking, he knew the Ignis was pouting. 

"Well, _forgive_ me for being a little excited about your duel against the New Guy. It's not every day that we go up against a fusion duelist. ...Or...duel at all. ...Ha." Ai paused, the sky remaining a blur of intersecting blues and greens, and Yusaku felt himself let out a deep breath, one echoed by a trail of static from Ai. The start of a question. "So… Why did you accept his challenge anyways?"

"Because you thought that I should."

" _Okay_ , but my argument wasn't...all that reflective of my usually high standards. I mean, you could've torn it down if you wanted to."

"I didn't want to," Yusaku said, and at Ai's puzzled beep, he let their eyes meet. Static drew a jagged path over his hands. "Ai, right now, your intuition seems like the best path forward. It’s hard for me to find that path on my own, but I'm _not_ on my own, and I could use your help."

Ai gave him a trembling, shallow nod, electricity branching under his skin. "...You know that I can't easily turn down a request like that, not anymore. Not...since I came back from- Anyways. ... I'm supposed to be mad at Yuki Judai right now, aren't I?"

"Probably," Yusaku replied, turning away with a certain lightness in his chest, as if some of his own worries had caught themselves in the digital wind and were tumbling away, fading more and more as they ascended up through the clouds. 

After a faint 'click', Shouichi returned as a voice in his right ear. "Looks like our newcomer will join you in a sec. You ready?"

"Yes."

Stark rectangles in neon green and yellow fractured the cliffside, a sign of an altered log-in sequence, and then Judai's avatar appeared with a flurry of simulated wind, wisps of blue falling away from its proud features. Judai was behind the sharp cheekbones, bone-pale skin, and gleaming grey eyes of this unfamiliar face, shadowed by the wild fall of the avatar's spiky, black hair. The long tails of its tattered trench coat almost brushed the ground, and Yusaku watched as Judai carefully lifted one thin hand, held it out with the fingers spread, and then began laughing uncontrollably in a new voice -- both piercing and loud. Ai mimed covering his non-existent ears. 

"N-No way. This _can't_ be real," Judai rasped out in the little pauses between laughs, which increasingly sounded pained. Yusaku just stared back. "H-Hold on, I gotta do the pose." After a cough, Judai's avatar straightened with a perfectly blank expression, as if it had lost connection with the VR Pod. Next, it began to raise one arm over its head, a process that was interrupted when Judai again exploded into laughter.

...Okay.

"It’s cool, Playmaker. You can admit that you're confused," Ai observed from the duel disk, audibly smug. "I mean, unless you'd find it embarrassing for the hero of Den City to admit that he doesn't follow the Pro League at all..."

“I don’t.”

"...You're so lucky to have me, you know that?" Ai commented before pausing for dramatic effect. Or praise. Yusaku just continued to blink at his would-be opponent, who was now doubled over and laughing at the ground. It was like being in school and witnessing his classmates giggle over an extended inside joke, to which Yusaku was far, far outside from. "...WELL, to summarize quickly, this avatar features a limited-time-only skin to commemorate Manjoume Thunder's placement in the world's top fifty bracket. Even a rudimentary search reveals just how popular this guy had become in Den City after incorporating Ojama Emperor into his competitive deck. That's a Link-3, by the way. So, he's a link duelist."

"He's also a fusion duelist," Yusaku said, because hearing the name had made the pieces simple to connect.

During his first year, Yuki Judai had dueled against Manjoume Jun in a widely televised match, and when Yusaku had first sorted through information on Judai's public dueling history, a still image from the arena had been included in several articles. The youngest son of the prestigious Manjoume family had worn an arrogant scowl, his face in profile against the filled stands. 

"Well… _Yeah_ ," Ai admitted with a static grumble. "But, anyways, my point is that he's something of an up-and-coming celebrity here, which gives me the right to tease you for not recognizing the guy. Right?"

"No."

"...That's no fun. Like, for contrast, look how much fun _he_ 's having, and we haven't even started the bloody duel yet!"

"Most players like customizing their avatars."

"...Could...you _sound_ like any more of a robot?"

Yusaku did not answer that, and Judai -- finally able to control himself -- awkwardly waved one of his hands at a transparent menu and then aggressively tapped at it.

"Okay, as much as I'd love to represent Thunder during our duel, I think this is a bit too...dangerous," Judai stated, his expression cracking with each word said in that raspier voice. Unsurprisingly, the composure didn't last for long, and Yusaku exchanged blank looks with Ai when Judai crumbled in place. "Noooo… No way _…_ "

"Oi! Stop delaying!" Ai yelped, shaking one tiny fist. 

"S-Sorry, sorry. It's just that… You know Edo, right?" 

"Edo Phoenix. Ranked seventh worldview and climbing. Stationed in Direct City. Unsurprisingly, he's yet _another_ person associated with Duel Academia," Ai observed, and Judai rolled his eyes as he stood up, cracking his knuckles. 

"Yep, that's Edo. He's also got a, err, 'sponsored skin' for Link VRAINS, and… Man, I can't even imagine the face Thunder would make if he found out that Edo's skin has over 100,000 more downloads than his own…. Yikes.”

"See, I'm starting to suspect that you're delaying on purpose, Mr. Hero Duelist. What, has Playmaker's cool reputation scared you _that_ badly?"

"You're kidding, right?" Judai exclaimed, arching an eyebrow, although his face suddenly changed when he closed the menu -- the narrowed, hawk-like stare replaced by one even more intense and rendered in dark blue. The ragged clothes became a stiff suit in slate grey, and when the new avatar smiled, the expression was startlingly close to one of Judai's, minus the fact that it appeared even more taunting. "If you wanna get started, then I'm game. While standard duels are what I usually go for, I've read up on these 'speed duels' and their latest rule changes. Plus, not to brag, but I'm a pretty fast learner when it comes to dueling."

"You'll need to choose a skill before we begin," Yusaku said, ignoring Ai's brief rant on the frequency that phrases like "Not to brag' were followed by outright bragging. He explained how Judai could open the 'Dueling Options' menu, the process simplified for a guest account, and access the default skills. He answered the straightforward questions that Judai asked. He demonstrated how to activate the D-board. 

The process of setting up the duel was relatively simple.

And yet it also wasn't, not when this duel was incredibly strange by his latest standards. It was a tiger's eye marble lying amongst undecorated ball bearings -- designed for something besides efficiency, for a purpose beyond the recent machine-like defenses of Playmaker against those who wanted to commit harmful acts. 

Earlier he had reached across a narrow sliver of distance and felt the living matter of Judai's wing, a tangible confirmation to his own conclusions. They no longer felt as tentative as figures lightly sketched in pencil and susceptible to being erased, to being smudged beyond recognition. 

Hesitation could no longer be permitted, and he found himself tightening his hands into fists, a rare, flickering excitement working its way through him. It told his heart to beat faster. It told the many worries lingering inside him to become silent, because a duel was going to be carried out -- a duel with such different stakes, in that it was not motivated by a strong, persistent fear.

He wanted to challenge this person.

He wanted to see beyond the wall of his own uncertainty. With Ai chirping away at his side, he kicked off the ground and made for where the wind ran quickly, the torrents wreathed by erratic ribbons of sparkling emerald and surging blue. Shouting out as he rose, Judai ascended in a spiral -- his avatar sinking naturally into the motion and directing the board smoothly. Directing it to hover, Judai joined him on the edge of a digital stream, the smirk all amusement and revealing much of the person underneath the rendered mask. That person was a potential ally. An asset. 

As Playmaker, Yusaku straightened, the energy of Link VRAINS humming around him, and Judai's smirk gained a new edge. 

Wordlessly, Yusaku directed his board down, letting it catch in the stream, and Judai followed, activating his own duel disk in a flare of rainbow light. 

\---

Far above the main hub of Link VRAINS, Yusaku took the first turn -- the D-Board humming below, shifting with even the minutest change to the digital wind. He considered his starting hand in the blink of an eye, each card already overlain with the transparent lines and nodes of new circuits, and he selected the first one to be played logically, aware of how its placement would affect the shaking web of possibilities and probabilities that was any duel. Including this one.

“Good luck. You got us watching you too,” Shouichi said via the audio link, and Jin chimed in next, featuring an accompaniment from Winged Kuriboh.

“Put on a show, Playmaker!”

“Kuri kuri!”

“Can’t tell if that overgrown dust bunny is cheering _for_ us or _against_ us,” Ai muttered, floating by his ear in Ignis form and spinning with the smaller bursts of the wind, like a young bird playing the unique flows of air drafts. “Although, chances are, that was some very rude hooting in Kuriboh-ese.”

“There’s not enough evidence for you to make that conclusion,” Yusaku plainly replied, his stare sliding to the duelist streaming forward and angling his D-Board expertly over the pulsing colours. Like the duel spirit, Judai hooted in excitement, both of his arms waving for balance.

“Well, either way, I’ve still got a grudge against this freeloading hero for making eyes at _my_ partner, so… Get him! Let’s go, let’s go!”

Ai pumped his fists in the air, and Yusaku -- letting a small smile flash across his face, unseen as his loose hair was ripped back and tossed with each new movement -- let a second card slip in between the fingers of his right hand.

“I discard Dotscaper to special summon Defcon Bird to the field. Next, the effect of Dotscaper activates,” he stated as the space in front of him erupted with blue light, the rounded wings of the monster forming through a maze of pixels. “Dotscaper is special summoned from the graveyard.”

“...Okay, I get where this is going. You’re quick to show off that signature summoning style, aren’t yah?” Judai airily commented, throwing out a wink. The suit of his avatar resisted the wind’s pull, and Judai’s stance suddenly changed, a bare interest flickering behind the blue eyes of this other duelist. 

“Appear, the circuit that leads to the future! I open the circuit, using my Defcon Bird to link summon the Link-1 Link Disciple,” Yusaku declared. The faint outlines of circuitry gathered until they were thicker, stronger. In red, the small monster began to form, and when it flexed its narrow limbs, they solidified inside this digitized world. Yusaku was not done. 

He continued in the same strong voice, his gaze unblinking as he changed more of this field.

“I open the circuit again, using my Dotscaper to link summon Link-1 Link Devotee.”

And, again, the circuit overlaid itself over the arena of their battle, the fluidity of the digital wind broken by the rigid structure, and the armored figure in cobalt blue with accents in red and green quickly rose up, joining its companion. 

“Huh. Two Link summons already? Scaaaary,” Judai drawled out, and Yusaku did not need to answer that, not when he could show Judai, without words, how prepared he was for this. 

“I activate Link Disciple’s effect to tribute Link Devotee. I draw one card and then place one card from my hand on the bottom of my deck.”

“Oh? You’re looking for something?” Ai asked, peeking over his shoulder, and Yusaku made the exchange quickly, opting to keep the spell card -- an attack from Judai could easily activate it, thus moving it to the graveyard where it could easily be banished later by Cyberse Witch's effect. But that reaction would play out later. The present demanded his attention.

“Link Devotee’s effect activates. Two Link tokens are special summoned to my side of the field," Yusaku said, and the tokens shimmered into existence behind the Link monster in red. He would need to set the card still, and he would also need to move these pieces into something capable of defending for a turn with minimal losses. Materials were crucial. Each card was fundamental to this new equation, now that he could see the way forward. It went past Cyberse Wizard. It went past Cyberse Wicckid. 

As of that moment, he had seen little of Judai's deck, and what he had seen spoke of sudden reversals and quick spikes in strength. The strategy had come to him unconsciously, woven as it were by the unceasing movements of the wind. 

Angling his D-Board higher, Yusaku raised his hand, and he formed a new circuit. 

Turns passed.

\---

This duel did not fit the pattern of his most recent duels, not when Yuki Judai was unlike any opponent he had ever faced. That fact became even more apparent as the turns passed, Yusaku taking calculated risks towards his goal and analyzing every fall of a new card. Of which there were many. 

"Spandex overload" was how Ai had grumpily described Judai's deck, huffing as a sleek hero in green, red, and black emerged with a proud shout. Because Ai was Ai, he then added, "N-Not that I'm including _you_ in my, err, sudden dislike for all things tight and clingy. Playmaker, don't get the wrong impression!"

"Sweatpants for a week sounds good," Yusaku had replied, deadpan, and he assessed the pieces on his own side of the field again. Crucially, Cyberse Wicckid had moved to the Extra Monster Zone, and Cyberse Magician's ritual summoning could be completed shortly, minus Ai's reservations about 'using a card that's designed to fight other _link_ monsters'. 

It did have other applications. Ai had only come to an obvious conclusion.

Which conclusions Judai himself had drawn were unclear, although one thing was apparent above all others -- Judai liked this duel. He rocked on the D-Board with a barely repressed energy. He would break into laughter so easily, carelessly like a dandelion seed catching on the wind and drifting away in loose arcs.

"Ah, I can feel the disappointment from here," Judai mused, tilting his head back, the avatar obeying the gesture. He spread his hands out, perfectly balanced over the torrent. "Playmaker really is a strong duelist, huh?"

"Just play already!" Ai yelped back, as if Ai himself wasn't the main instigator of mid-duel banter. 

"Hmm.. Sure you want that? I'm also quite the strong duelist," Judai replied, throwing out a wink, and while Ai stuttered, he declared an attack, targeting Wicckid. Yusaku was there, letting the mechanisms of his deck spin faster. He activated a trap. He added more cards to his hand.

He moved valuable materials, aware that Judai was watching him closely.

\---

The turn passed.

Taking advantage of the relatively low attack points amongst the Cyberse Link-1 and -2 monsters, Judai had chipped away at Yusaku's own life points (1300 to 3400), and because Judai's own trap cards had (quite severely) disrupted his play, Yusaku then ended his next turn with only Wicckid and a single set card. Below them, the scenery had become a desert of oranges and reds, the sky pitched darker like the canvas of the night. 

“Come on, my new hero!”

Quickly, with the start of his next turn, Judai let a different Elemental Hero with steel-grey armor and stronger wings become his vanguard -- Elemental Hero Shining Flare Wingman, its attack boosted to 4600. It was then that Judai laughed in a different way, rumbling with the potential to grow far, far louder. 

In white and gold, the new monster’s armor curved over an agile form. The edges of its mighty wings were translucent, and the presence of it echoed that of Air Neos, undeniable in how something intangible churned steadily in the distance between them -- even here in this virtual world.

Judai had taken the lead, and he rotated the D-Board expertly. "So, Wicckid's effect saves it and its fellow Cyberse monsters from destruction via my own card effects, but it can't negate battle _damage_ , and my new friend here is quite the fighter, if I can boast for a moment," Judai teased, and Yusaku had only a simple response to make, because Judai's assessment was accurate. A blow from the fusion monster would end the duel. 

Provided there were no interruptions to that sequence of events.

"It's your turn. You can attack if you want to."

Ai cringed, muttering, "Gee, Yusaku-chan, we have to talk about bluffing techniques. Now he's _definitely_ going to be suspicious of you!"

In contrast, Judai only laughed again. "Ahhh, be careful, Playmaker… I might just go for it."

"I won't stop you," he answered, unflinching, and he could see the attack beginning -- Judai's fingers stretching out, the monster itself lowering its masked face as its shoulders tensed, the gleaming armor shifting. 

"Alright! Go, Shining Flare Wingman! Attack Wicckid with your elemental burst!"

Yusaku moved, the card lifting in an instant. "I activate the trap Negate Attack! Your attack does not go through, and the Battle Phase ends here."

" _Huh_ ?!" Ai blurted out as the armored monster obediently straightened again, the duelist behind it dramatically smacking himself on the forehead. Ai sputtered, "S-Since when are _you_ using old-school trap cards?! What's next? Are you going to put on a clear face mask and a trenchcoat? Or...start hanging out with a bunch of cyber criminals on a boat?!"

"...Not sure if I get those references, but, hey, nice block!" Judai admitted, Winged Kuriboh giving a cheerful 'Woooooh!' through the audio feed. "Old-school cards have a good feeling to them, don't they?"

"Although Mirror Force would've been better here," Ai grumbled, and Yusaku glanced at him. That was a comment he could answer. 

"Many powerful trap cards are activated following the destruction of a monster. Shining Flare Wingman is a valuable fusion monster, so it's reasonable that Judai would retaliate seriously if I destroyed it."

"If you…? Huh?! So, what, just because this guy is mad about caped crusaders, you're _not_ going to blow up his monsters?!"

"I didn't say that."

"You _basically_ said it."

"This isn't the time to move forward."

"...You're still talking about the duel, right?"

Yusaku focused again on the field, Ai grumbling in the background. "Because this is a Speed Duel, the end of the Battle Phase signals the end of his turn, as Main Phase 2 is skipped in this format. That is another advantage to this trap."

"So… You're stalling. ...Okay," Ai concluded, shrugging, and then he conjured two pom-poms out of thin air. "I can still cheer for that. Ahem. Playmaker, he's our man! If he can't do it, no one can!"

"Ah, I was hoping for more original lyrics than that. Come on, I think I can take a little trash talk from you, Ai-chan," Judai commented, throwing in a wink, and before Ai could snap out a reply, he continued. "Well, like you've said, I basically have no choice but to end my turn, and yet… I've gotta keep you hostage here for a bit, Playmaker."

"What do you mean?"

"Hmm…" Judai rocked back, angling his head to the side. "You remembered what I said earlier about dueling, right? Sure, it's all about cards on the surface, but _really_ it's about the connections between individuals. People with other people. Duelists with their cards. ...You get the idea."

Yusaku frowned. "You want to know what I think of our connection."

"Sort of," he admitted. Below, the sands thinned, revealing clustered rock formations and deep crags. "Let's start with the basics instead. What've you learned about me so far? I mean, I can make some _assumptions_ , but...let's be straightforward about this instead. After all, I'm hoping for some compliments!"

Yusaku did pause at that, not because he doubted his own observations about Judai's approach to dueling. Rather, he wanted to ensure that his words were the correct ones, and when an old piece of advice seemed convenient, he took it. 

"There are three things," he began, and just like that, he found the sentences he needed. "First, you believe in the potential of your own cards."

"Ha, well that's definitely true. Although… I could turn around and say the same thing about _you_ ," Judai declared with a pleased look, and he spun away on the D-Board, the field remaining frozen, artificially suspended. "Your bond with those Cyberse cards is definitely strong, and I can tell how loyal they are to you in return."

"I like my cards," Yusaku said simply, so simply that he expected a sarcastic remark following the statement. Ai had drifted slightly higher, his arms spread out, and those ever-watchful yellow eyes were very round, and then Yusaku understood the quiet. 

Reaching up, he batted at Ai's stomach, and the Ignis whirled away with a neon pink blush. "W-W-What are you d-doing?!"

"Why would I keep playing the Cyberse cards if I didn't like them?"

"D-Don't answer a question with a question!" Ai shot back, huffing a little, and Yusaku just smiled at him before shifting his focus back to Judai. The wind had grown in intensity, and its shrill howls and flares of energy had only made him want to fly faster. That rare flash of excitement from earlier had sustained itself. 

"Second," he stated, "you believe that you're capable of winning here."

"Again, that doesn't apply to just me…"

"Third, you believe in the genuine connections you've formed through dueling others, including Manjoume Jun and Edo Phoenix."

Judai flipped a section of smooth, grey hair. "Personally, I'm of the opinion that Edo would do well here in Link VRAINS. After all he plays the D Heroes. He's even into extreme sports, so how could a 'D-Board' _not_ be a perfect fit?"

"I must be right, if that's your honest reaction," Yusaku said, and Judai chuckled. 

"True, but, again, I'd bet that statement extends to you too. I'm sure there were some, ah, 'interesting' duels along the way for Team Playmaker."

At that, Yusaku's jaw tightened. "What's important is that we're all here now. No other outcome would be acceptable."

"Ah, I get it. My own dueling history is…a complicated subject, to put it lightly," Judai admitted, giving him a causal shrug. "Still, it seems that my methods are effective on even the great Playmaker. It's a fun duel, isn't it?"

"Perhaps," Yusaku said, purposefully dry and making Judai roll his eyes. "Although, it's also not over yet."

"Alright then! I end my turn. Let's see if you can get to my Wingman! Or...if you _dare_ to try!"

"I plan on doing more than that," Yusaku answered, and he drew his next card -- Backup Secretary, ideal for this turn. The materials for the Ritual Summon were already in his hand, only now the winds were favourable. He began to move ahead, cards flitting between his fingers while he gaze remained on the field. No counters came. 

Cyberse Magician unfolded itself over the battlefield, linked with Wicckid, and Judai only watched at first, as if the prospect of his fusion monster being ripped from the field was impossibly distant. No tension wracked his form. 

"Cyberse Wicckid's effect activates," Yusaku stated, the duel disk's display obediently snapping to a new menu. "I banish the Defcon Bird in my graveyard to add Cyberse Synchron to my hand from my deck."

Yusaku did not trust that it would end here, given Judai's high life points combined with two the face-down cards shimmering with latent potential. In addition, Judai's skill had not been used or identified. Therefore, he would complete the lock. He would use the two cards in his hand to build a fortress above these sands, and Judai, as if sensing how his thoughts coiled together, smiled even wider than before.

"Next, I special summon Backup Secretary from my hand and normal summon Cyberse Synchron. The effect of Cyberse Synchron activates. One per turn, I can target one Level 4 or lower monster that I control and increase its current level by its original level."

"A Level 7 Synchro monster? That could mean… Oh. _Oh_!" Ai yelped, and Yusaku was already declaring it -- the Synchro Summon that would complete the formation, with Wicckid pointing to both Cyberse Magician and his gleaming dragon, now arising from a whirlpool of white and silver. Its maw formed, bared teeth glistening. 

The metal had formed its final shape -- the lock was complete. 

Yusaku declared an attack. 

"Cyberse Quantum Dragon, attack Shining Flare Wingman." Judai did not activate one of his waiting face-down cards, and Yusaku moved forward, the great dragon letting out a piercing roar as it launched towards its target. The hero braced itself, wings spread wide. "Cyberse Quantum Dragon's effect activates! The monster it's battling is returned to the hand, and then it can make a second attack!"

The impact had not come, not yet, and Judai's shoulders became set in a straight line, a new shadow turning his expression, carried out as it was over another's face. Intrigue showed. It would have burned green-orange in Judai's amber eyes. 

"You've done more than simply make it so I can't declare attacks next turn," Judai drawled out. "I can't target any of your monsters with card effects, nor can I destroy them with, say, non-targeting spells like Wrath of Neos. You were watching my duel earlier today closely, weren't you?" Diving lower, the dragon began to gather energy, white sparks enveloping it. Judai's voice lowered even further. "Damn, this is going to be really, really exciting. I think my hands are shaking."

Yusaku did not speak, waiting for the hero to be taken in by the white light, and then it was gone. 

The dragon pursued. Screeching, it folded its wings in and dropped again, Judai himself the target. 2500 attack points would be only the beginning, the second assault from Cyberse Magician with the potential to end the duel. And yet, such outcomes remained hypothetical.

In a flicker of a movement, Judai had activated his right face-down card, a trap. 

"I activate Brave Hero Spirit! During the Battle Phase of a turn in which a Fusion Monster containing at least one Elemental Hero as material left the field due to an opponent's card effect, I can reduce the damage I take from a direct attack to 0 and draw one card."

"He can _what_ ?!" Ai shouted, suddenly landing on Yusaku's shoulder and shaking him. "He has to be making that up! It's so... _perfect_ . Like he _knew_."

"Well, it's a combination of skill and luck," Judai observed, ducking under the dragon's attack as the monster circled back to Yusaku's side of the field. "I'll leave it to you to figure out the ratio."

"The Battle Phase isn't over," Yusaku said, and that was the precursor to two more strikes, both of which landed. In tandem, Cyberse Magician and Wicckid launched themselves across the field, and Magician struck first, wielding the blue staff with precision. Wicckid attacked with a green beam, Judai wobbling on the D-board as his life points ticked down: Judai's 400 to his 1300. Incorporated into his avatar, the duel disk attached to Judai's wrist was sleek and modern, and even with the field's length of distance between them, Yusaku could still see the portrait of Cyberse Quantum Dragon spread across it, the effect text in blue to the right. 

"Let's see if I have this right. Wicckid cannot be destroyed by battle or card effects, and the Cyberse monsters that it points to also cannot be destroyed by card effects. Because you have a Link monster, Wizard and Dragon's effects both activate. So, I have to somehow target _both_ of them for card effects and attacks, leading to a contradiction."

"You're correct."

Judai said nothing at first, shaking his head slightly. "Ah, how calculating… Although, I'm not planning on disappointing you, Playmaker. You want me to fight against this wall, don't you?"

"It's a duel. Use everything you have." 

Soaring high, Yusaku assessed the neat triangle of his monsters. Yusaku’s hand was now empty, meaning that he would have to rely on his graveyard effects for reactions against unexpected counters. There could be many. The strategy itself was not faultless.

But it was his own, carried out with Cyberse cards. 

"I end my turn."

Judai did not draw. Instead, he tapped to a new menu. He looked up with an uneven grin. 

"I activate my Skill -- Quick Hero Exchange. By paying half of my life points and skipping my usual draw, I can add one Quick-Play Spell from my deck to my hand."

"He's serious. Be careful," Ai whispered, and Yusaku nodded, ready for the attack to begin. The top card on Judai's deck glowed -- it had already been there, as if it had been waiting for this turn. He took it. Their eyes met. 

"Guess I don't need a Skill, since I have enough luck on my own,” Judai said.

"You can't reverse its activation."

"Ah, no. I'm fine with it. The fewer life points I have, the more exciting a reversal will be," Judai stated, and then he lifted his first card. Others remained in his hand -- including the new one, the crucial one -- and one face-down on the field. “My side’s looking a bit empty, so it’s the time for a hero to appear! Come on! I summon Elemental Hero Liquid Soldier!”

The monster burst onto the field, its blue, plated armor over a dark bodysuit segmented by white lines. Two green orbs encircled its wrists, the liquid within churning madly as the hero posed, the stance defensive. 

“A new monster,” Ai commented, the words hushed, and Yusaku nodded. It could signal the start of a new strategy, one he had not accounted for.

“Because my hero was Normal Summoned, I can Special Summon one Level 4 or lower hero from my graveyard. I chose Elemental Hero Prisma!”

“Ah, _this_ card again,” Ai muttered next, and, yes, the slender hero with the ice-like body was familiar, its effect enabling Judai to make a variety of fusions, to _adapt_. Yusaku’s eyes narrowed.

Yes, Judai did believe that he could win this, or maybe even-

“You want to end it this turn,” he stated, the connections snapping into place, and Judai did not answer him directly, not when his smirk had angled higher and higher. It was a confirmation.

Of the cards in his hand, Judai picked the one on the right, and he held it up briefly, pausing for a moment sparking with potential. The clash neared, and Judai suddenly dropped his arm, pressing the edge of the card against where an old-style disk would have had a slot for the graveyard. His smirk turned wild, and the card became engulfed in light.

“I discard one card from my hand to activate my spell card, the fusion magic Super-”

They were falling.

Over a landscape of endless red, they were falling -- the duel boards gone, the sky a grid of competing error messages so tightly knit together that they formed a cage of brutal red over the featureless polygons below. Ai had already reacted, the Ignis’s small body morphing into a vast circle as thin tentacles reached down for him and Judai. Under the broken logic of this broken world, all sound was gone, and Yusaku, biting back a useless curse, threw his hand up, his fingers aching as they stretched out more and more, and-

With his head spinning, he found himself kneeling inside the VR room.

He was alone.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CARD GAMES, PART TWO: I was searching through decklists for ‘fun things for Yusaku to do’, and when I saw a comment about Super Polymerization being a possible counter to the Wicckid-Dragon-Magician combo, I wanted to suggest that would be Judai’s counter here, or an integral part of it at least. In terms of feasible fusion material, Elemental Hero Escuridao uses only a generic Elemental Hero plus a dark-attribute monster. ...I should also emphasize that, again, writing duels is hard for me, so I'm sure that a few mistakes are still in here. @______@ I'm nervous about that, always.
> 
> Also: Thank you for reading this far. I really appreciate it, and I hope this is fun to read through. That's my goal.


	9. Chapter 9

\---

Immediately he had a hand over his duel disk, blindly flipping through the menus while his throat tightened and tightened, an invisible rope constricting him because the ebb and flow of Ai was so _faint_ . The system logs had registered the forced log-out of thousands of players, at least ten sequences designed to ease the transition remaining uninitiated, and Yusaku forced himself to read more, the dizziness encroaching, blurring everything but the slow, _weak_ cycle of the energy he had for so long thought of as ‘Ai’. And-

“-ey! _Hey_! Yusaku-chan, it’s okay!”

Ai.

His head erupted with pain when he shot to his feet, a reaction that was nonsensical and _stupid_ and desperate. He staggered, bracing himself against one grey wall, and Ai warbled with concern. Ai, who was not dead. Ai, who was not _gone_ and-

“Where are you?”

“Oh! I’m sort of, err, in-between your duel disk and the computers here, since that forced log-out did something weird to your disk. It doesn’t look _scary_ now that I’ve run a few tests of my own. Mostly just redundancies caused by, you know, being _booted_ out of Link VRAINS and bypassing… Hey. It’s okay,” Ai stated, something intangible sweeping over Yusaku’s shoulders in rhythmic waves and prickling slightly like static electricity. It reminded him to breathe, and, shuddering, he closed his eyes, his throat working on nothing. Ai repeated the same gesture, and although his voice was strained -- the syllables clipped and vibrating with a pain that the humor could not force still -- Ai continued from the speakers above. “Come on, you don’t seriously think that a system error would be enough to take _me_ out, do you? I’ve got, oh, 35,374 speeches on my own individual greatness that I can give at a moment’s notice, and trust me when I say they’re 100% accurate, an Ai-approved estimate.”

“I…” When he trailed off into nothing, Ai made a questioning sound, gently mapping out the contours of his shoulders with another soothing ‘touch’. “...Where’s Judai?”

“Oh, he’s with Shouichi and Jin in the other room. ...I’m surprised you can’t hear him through the wall, actually. Oh, and I might’ve, uh, told everyone to give us a minute, since I’m a bit scrambled and you’re the best at sorting through my data.”

“You didn’t have to lie to them.”

“Sure, but if I don’t throw in some deception now and then, you’ll get bored of me,” Ai teased, and Yusaku reluctantly opened his eyes before pushing himself off the wall. “Uh, we can just...hang out here for a bit. It’s totally fine! A certain bearded man is on the case, with assistance from a certain scruffy-haired young man and featuring some entertaining rants from a certain… Hey!”

Ai had locked him in.

“I know why you’re doing this.”

“Ah, do you? How about we have a long and spirited discussion about it?”

“Ai, I have to analyze what happened. This could have been another attack from Calamity.”

“I’d classify that conclusion as ‘unlikely’,” Ai retorted, and the door did not open, despite Yusaku’s glare digging into it. “From what I’ve seen, it looks like SOL Technologies was trying to quickly patch something in the background, meaning without kicking everyone from the servers and losing playtime as a result, only for it to go, well, _wrong_. ...Does your head still hurt? If it does, I’ve got a couple of revenge plans in the works, and testing one out could be fun.”

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“...It could still be fun though.”

“Stop that,” Yusaku mumbled, uselessly rapping his knuckles against the top of the duel disk. A small, purple heart flickered over the display before blinking away. Sighing, Yusaku looked up again. “Staying in here isn’t going to help me focus, not when all I can think about is uncovering what really happened.”

“...If you say so. But, to make things clear, just know that you’re not getting away from an Ai-exclusive massage-slash-cuddle session before we go to bed.”

“Fine.”

“Nice! Uh… One sec… How did I even-?”

“Ai.”

“I-I didn’t forget, so… Ah! There!”

Rolling his eyes, Yusaku waved a hand at the door, and after a string of curses from his partner, it finally slid open. He stepped into the main area of the food truck.

Of all the possible outcomes, Yusaku had never considered any involving Yuki Judai suddenly throwing an arm over his shoulders and knocking their foreheads together -- a gesture that had Yusaku feeling vaguely like a piece of furniture that Judai had grabbed onto to stop himself from falling over. Just as quickly, Judai whirled away again, his too-long canines visible as his grin broadened, and Yusaku could only blink at him. Processing.

Apparently a duel with Judai had unlocked a new level in their extremely nebulous partnership, and, assessing the rest of the space, Yusaku found himself being gaped at by Shouichi -- his hands hovering by the keyboard and dangerously close upsetting to a full cup of coffee -- while Jin shook his head in disbelief. His sardonic comment was directed at Judai.

“So, do you end _all_ of your duels this way, or is the hugging just reserved for Playmaker?”

Pivoting on his heel, Judai opened his mouth, closed it, and then cringed, guiltily. “Ahh, sorry about that.”

“It’s not like you broke anything,” Yusaku replied, deadpan, and before Judai could get the word ‘duel’ out, Yusaku addressed Shouichi, who was not-subtly dabbing at a coffee stain on his shirt with a tissue. “Has SOL Technologies issued a statement on the forced log-out?”

“It’s a short one,” Shouichi replied, pulling up the maintenance forums for Link VRAINS. “Since those court cases over the Another incident went viral, the higher-ups are terrified of more bad press relating to player safety, especially if it could lead to more lawsuits, and a lot of players are reporting dizziness, headaches, disorientation… Things of that nature.”

“Is that the only way players were affected?”

“On the surface, yes. But still I’m looking into it,” Shouichi explained, and Yusaku quickly read the statement over his shoulder, frowning at the brevity. According to the head of SOL Technologies maintenance team, the patch had been implemented to improve data security, and apologies were given to the playerbase for the disturbance. 

The virtual world would be closed until further notice.

“We’ll have to verify this,” Yusaku muttered as he moved back, his mind grappling with the new problem. It would be foolish to attribute _every_ strange event to Calamity’s influence, especially if there was evidence to the contrary. And yet, such anomalous occurrences in VRAINS had been rare since he had retrieved Ai.

There was also the suspicious timing of it all, interrupting the turn of Judai's spell card, as well as ending the duel itself. 

Had...an outside agent crashed VRAINS to stop their duel?

...If so, then...why?

“You can take over this station,” Jin said, sliding out one chair and grabbing his laptop instead.

“...Thank you,” Yusaku answered after an accidental pause, and he shook his head as he sat down and pulled up the error reports for Link VRAINS. “Kusanagi-san, can you also check for changes in SOL Technologies’ security, including those to its server rooms and staff areas?”

“Already on it.”

“Right.” He shook his head again, and, this time, Shouichi chuckled a little.

“Bet you still wish you were dueling.”

He did. 

“Uh… Speaking of dueling…” Judai began, nervously enough that Yusaku glanced over at him, his hand running up the back of his neck and through his already-chaotic hair. “Is it possible that the crash is tied to the activation of my card?”

“Your deck should have been rejected during the log-in process if it contained any cards with effects that could damage Link VRAINS or the players who use it,” Yusaku said, and Judai’s eyebrows lowered, his expression tight. “After I review the error logs, I can scan your cards individually to rule out that possibility."

“I’d...just hate to think that I messed up and caused all of those people to be hurt.”

“Even if the error was caused by your card, then SOL Technologies would still be at fault for not identifying it during the log-in nor for ensuring that the players could be logged-out safely.”

“I gotta back-up Yusaku here,” Shouichi added, his fingers diligently tapping out new lines of code. “For your card to have both passed the new log-in test and _then_ gone on to crash Link VRAINS is about as likely as all of Den City swearing off hot dogs and coffee for the next fifty years. In other words, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“If you say so… But… I’ll feel better once we know for sure,” Judai admitted, and Yusaku replied immediately, their eyes meeting.

“We will. Give us some time.”

“Don’t underestimate my brother and Fujiki-kun. When it comes to analyzing Link VRAINS, they’re experts,” Jin added, and he pointedly kicked at the second fold-out chair that had been crammed into the back of the truck. “Come on, you got a phone, don’t you? Search around, and maybe you’ll stumble across a lead or two.”

“Kuri kuri! Kuri kuri!"

Further reinforcement came from Winged Kuriboh, who dropped down and nuzzled Judai’s chin so enthusiastically that he had to pinwheel his arms for balance, Shouichi’s coffee wobbling again and grabbed at with a stilted ‘Ah! Not this time!’.

The only word to describe it was ‘cute’ -- how the duel spirit chirped away and flapped its wings while Judai tried, unsuccessfully, to escape. 

With a quick glance at his duel disk, Ai giving him another small, purple heart, Yusaku faced his monitor and began to work.

\---

It took him less than an hour to parse the error codes, and in the process, his tentative theories have been refined into a sequence of events, each one distinct and contributing to what seemed to be an accident.

To _call_ it an accident would require a greater degree of certainty, and he hoped that Ai’s findings would provide that: the AI happily digging into encrypted code (‘Pfff. Totally primitive.’) and sorting through billions of data points. The occasional hum or chorus of a pop song would sound over the truck’s speakers, the latter inevitably making both brothers groan in unison.

“The catastrophic error seems to have been caused by how Link VRAINS handles player data, specifically biometric tracking data,” was how Yusaku began, his eyes trained on the monitor. “The maintenance team wanted to change the parameters used for storing this data, and this conflicted with how the player log-in queue handles its own data. The underlying issue was exacerbated by how many players were in the queue and trying to access VRAINS.”

“So… Is...this the part where I can stop feeling guilty?” Judai asked sheepishly, and Yusaku continued with his explanation. He chose the words carefully. They were useless if Judai couldn’t understand.

“Because the weekend is when the population of Link VRAINS is usually at its highest, players sometimes have to wait several minutes in a ‘log-in queue’ before they can play the game. My account, which is your guest account is connected to, uses a falsified ‘admin’ tag to skip to the front of the queue, which is why neither one of us experienced it.”

“Skipping lines. ...I can support that.”

“The problem begins when players drop out of the queue. The...current system becomes confused. It leaves behind a ‘ghost’ of the player in the same position. Usually, these ‘ghosts’ are simple to deal with, but if a player enters the queue again, the system can find itself with two different sets of data for the same player.” Frowning, Yusaku stared at the values and then through them, thinking of how he could fit his next sentence together. “For example, most players allow for their eye movements and facial expressions to be tracked, as this can improve their experience, and the system tries to collect some of this data while they’re in the queue to ease the log-in experience. Therefore, because of the ghost, the same player can be both smiling and frowning at the same time, and this needs time to be resolved. If…’put under pressure’, the system will default to ‘kicking’ the player and all of their ghosts out of the queue. This is based on an anti-cheat protocol.”

“Wouldn’t the ghost be like a...snapshot of the player?” Judai asked, and Yusaku glanced up at that, noting that the other duelist was now peering at his monitor with interest. “Like, say if I got booted out while I was smiling. I would _always_ be smiling in the exact same way, and that’s not very human, is it?”

Shouichi cut in. “Nice observation. You’re right, but like Yusaku said, the system needs time to compare the data between the player and the ghost. This ‘time’ is miniscule, of course, although it still means that the system is wasting resources performing a bunch of exorcisms.”

“Ah, I get it. So… We have all these ghosts running around…”

" _Lots_ of ghosts, since people get impatient and think rejoining the queue is like a magic charm," Shouichi added.

Yusaku nodded. “Yes. When the maintenance team changed how the system must handle all biometric tracking data, this created a series of problems. The system reacted by immediately kicking all players with ghosts out of the queue.”

“...Wouldn’t that just make more ghosts?”

“No. The anti-cheat protocol bypasses the normal log-out sequence. However,” Yusaku added, leaning back in his chair and rubbing at his tired eyes, “something went wrong with how the system defines things like ‘player id’ and ‘queue position’. Its next action was to remove all other players from the queue and then from Link VRAINS.”

“Now _that_ sounds like overkill,” Judai concluded, and when Winged Kuriboh ‘wooh-ed’ in agreement, Yusaku flinched at the noise, because evidently the duel spirit had landed on his arm without him registering the added weight. Or the slight way the spirit rocked back and forth happily, its eyes sparkling. “Oh, Winged Kuriboh’s impressed that you’ve managed to figure all of this out so quickly. Obviously that goes for me as well. If we’d had coding classes back at Duel Academy, I’d _definitely_ have been with you for group projects!”

“...Thanks,” Yusaku said. He nodded to Winged Kuriboh, and more hooting followed. "However, an outside agent could still have manipulated the implementation of this patch, or contributed to the system misclassifying-"

Ai then shouted with enough vigor to make Yusaku, briefly, reconsider the necessity of having speakers in the food truck, his duel disk, and even his own apartment. Select alterations would make his life much quieter overall. 

“Everyone, my Ai-nalysis is complete~! The results are in~!”

“It’s fine. I didn’t even like this shirt,” Shouichi grumbled, not bothering to dab at the new stain, and Yusaku shot him a sympathetic look, an action made somewhat-difficult by how tightly a startled Judai had gripped his shoulders. When he tapped on one finger, Judai practically jumped across the back area of the food truck, waving his hands in wide arcs and cringing. 

“Oh, my bad!”

“It’s not like you broke anything,” Yusaku repeated, which was true. Judai deflated, over-dramatic enough to rival Ai on a quiet day.

Today, clearly, was not a quiet day, as his partner carried on from there. The lights inside the truck oscillated from purple to pink: a necessary part of the presentation (“I didn’t even know they could do that,” Shouichi added in the background). 

“Yusaku-chan’s story checks out, with 99.99999999999999% Ai-approval! Simply put,” he chirped, and Yusaku could envision him preening far too easily, “the ‘ghost glitch’ has been around for, oh, the last four patches, and it went unnoticed because all of those little errors were still so tiny in the grand scheme of things. Plus, the fixes _have_ tightened up security. Not enough to stop _me_ from taking a peak, but, hey, that’s to be expected, considering that I’m a natural talent and all. Yes~?”

“Sure,” Shouichi replied glumly, sipping the remains of his coffee, and Ai scoffed. 

"Still, for this to be a coincidence feels weird, eh? 

"Naturally. But it's not like we have any other evidence."

"Not _yet_."

Yusaku answered next.

“You’ve done well, Ai. Don’t push yourself too hard.”

“Ah, that was nothing for me. _You’re_ the one rubbing at your eyes, Yusaku-chan! Nothing gets by my notice! Nothing!”

Wisely, Yusaku did not argue that last point.

“So… Let me get this straight. The virtual world might've crashed because...it’s too popular and too...safe. Sort of,” Judai said.

“According to their documentation, the maintenance team was trying to improve data security,” Yusaku clarified, and then he frowned, trying not to rub at his eyes again. “However, the crash itself is still suspicious, even if we cannot directly connect it to Calamity. It's possible that the crash was orchestrated somehow. We’ll need to run more tests.”

"It _did_ wreck our duel. Maybe a Playmaker fan was watching and got mad since my heroes were looking too strong…"

"I'll analyze the data related to our duel again."

“Sounds like a late night.”

“Yes. I’ve...been trying not to do that,” he admitted, Shouichi giving him a knowing look. Back when they were after the Knights of Hanoi, staying awake for hours and hours was common, and the practice had returned during his search for Ai. But now, it strained him. He recognized that, like isolating an ache that he would have otherwise just ignored. The symptom was important, suggestive of an underlying break.

Shouichi cleared his throat. “We can let a few programs run overnight. With some luck, the remaining answers will just pop up with zero effort on our part. At least, a guy can dream, right?”

"Plus, if we wear ourselves out, then we can't react to a direct attack," Judai added.

“There’s still the issue of monitoring activity from Calamity. They’re currently invisible to us,” Yusaku said next, switching tasks with a few rapid clicks.

“Excellent point, my dear Yusaku-chan. Like, if _I_ was roleplaying as the bad g-Ai here, I would totally mess with an unrelated program just to distract everyone. Taking down _all_ of VRAINS is flashy and _bold_ , if nothing else,” Ai observed, Jin laughing. Probably at how _blunt_ Ai was. “Either way, I can add a few parameters to our search. Like Mr. Scruffy-and-Grumpy said, we _might_ just get lucky.”

“We shouldn’t count on that outcome.”

Ai huffed. “Yeah, yeah… Don’t act like I’ve overlooked that!”

“Uh… So if we’re all doing…’computer stuff’,” Judai began, making his way towards the door with an exaggerated slowness, like the universe had put him on 0.5x speed, “then I’m gonna bounce. Things to do, people to see…”

“You sure about that?” Jin asked, and Judai then quickly spun on his heel.

“Ah, so a member of Team Playmaker _is_ curious about what I’m up to. I...sorta meant to bring it up before, but I haven’t been slacking off in Den City. From what I’ve figured out myself, the Light of Destruction wants to convert people that it finds useful. You know, people with a lot of influence, special skills…”

Jin answered quickly, Yusaku’s fingers stalling for a second over the keyboard as he took in the new information. “No offense, but that approach sounds tough for you as an outsider here. The Light can change someone’s personality, right? That sign would be easy for you to miss.”

“... _True_ ,” Judai admitted before soldiering on, his energy rising, “but other people would notice for sure. For example, if the Light went after, say, the CEO of some big company, the employees might pick up on it, and...they also might share a bit _too_ much info with a friendly tourist…”

“...Huh. That’s actually pretty good,” Jin stated, and Judai only beamed wider when Ai made a static buzz of agreement. With a bright ‘Kuri kuri!’, Winged Kuriboh floated down to rest on his shoulder, and when Yusaku glanced over next, the spirit had become transparent again. His own questions multiplied, each new piece of information leading his already-splitting thoughts down new paths, and- 

Right. He had to choose the settings for this sweeper program. Jin took the lead again.

"Although that plan relies a lot on people wanting to talk to you."

"Ah, so you're doubting my natural charm…"

“I didn’t _say_ that,” Jin replied, and minus the few interjections from Ai, the two of them alternated between discussing the finer details of Judai’s plan. It _did_ justify why the hero duelist already had a reputation in Den City for being a difficult opponent -- namely, Judai was using his duels as a way of learning about the major businesses, districts, and influences here. It was also likely that, considering his extrasensory abilities, he was finding ways to converse with local duel spirits as well.

As part of the conversation, Jin also exchanged their numbers with Judai’s. It had been a serious oversight. Another sign of how this stress could make the obvious become obscure. 

Even now, the phantom presence of Yubel moved through the air, and it was convenient that he now had a name for the being who watched him, their unseen eyes staring out with a focus that made his skin prickle. Shouichi and Jin seemed unaware of that feeling, Jin snorting at one of Judai’s off-hand jokes and closing his laptop with a snap.

“I guess I shouldn’t praise your approach too much though, since you haven’t found a single clue about Calamity yet.”

“ _Yet._ Yet,” Judai repeated, one finger raised for emphasis, and Winged Kuriboh chirped in support.

“So, tonight’s going to change that?”

With a quick look over at Yusaku, Judai’s grin settled back over his face. “Well, with Link VRAINS down, I’d imagine that the physical dueling arenas in the city would be packed. Sure, I’ll need a lot of luck, but… What can I say? Low odds usually work out for me, haha…”

At that, Yusaku pushed away from the desk. “If you do find information about the Light of Destruction, that could make you a target.”

“True,” Judai admitted before continuing on with a new burst of energy, “ _but_ maybe I could flip a situation like that around. Sounds good, right?” A beat passed, their eyes locked, and then Judai ran one hand up the back of his neck. “Besides, uh, when it comes to backup, me and Yubel have a whole gallery of heroes, not to mention Winged Kuriboh here.”

“You’ve already been injured in this fight,” Yusaku replied, and he didn’t miss how Jin stiffened, that amused expression dropping.

“... _Technically_ that’s true, but, really, I-”

“I gotta pick up my duel disk from our apartment, but then I’ll be ready. I’ll go with you.”

That statement from Jin broke Shouichi out of his daze, and he opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, his startled eyes on the younger brother. The younger brother who had already picked up his hoodie and started to do up the zipper. “Uh. Wait a sec. Back up there, Jin.”

“I’m out of my league when it comes to programming like this. All I’m doing here is giving myself a headache, and since I _can_ duel just fine myself, it makes sense for me to watch his back. Plus, I’m a local. My condition doesn’t change the fact that I know what’s normal for this city and what _isn’t_.”

“I… Uh.” Shouichi shook his head. “You’re right about that, but if dueling really can brainwash people, then maybe this whole plan is-”

“Wait. You think I’d _lose_?”

“Hey. I didn’t say that, and-”

“Look, I can do this, _so_ -”

Several things happened at once, the strained words all blending together and ending with Jin huffing, grabbing a sheepish Judai by the arm, and dragging him out of the truck. The door shut. Shouichi made a sound like a punctured tire letting its air out.

“Uh. Woah. That could’ve gone be-”

“Not now, Ai,” Shouichi mumbled, and a ‘frown’ emoji flashed over the display of Yusaku’s duel disk. Yusaku could relate.

He also had no idea what to say. 

Shouichi’s jaw was tensed, his hands still over the keyboard while the screen remained partitioned by those many windows. The next emoji from Ai was of himself facepalming in Ignis form.

That was not helpful.

“Did...my brother actually just run out of here to go to a dueling arena? When this magical brainwashing _thing_ spreads itself by dueling?”

Yusaku looked down at the duel disk. Ai continued to facepalm at him. It was difficult to interpret. Maybe Ai was ‘facepalming’ the whole situation. Maybe.

Yusaku decided to nod as neutrally as possible, and Shouichi immediately deflated.

“I get how this _sounds_ ,” he began, tired. “Jin’s sharp. I know he’s sharp. But there’s a difference between...me knowing _that_ and me being a totally calm and composed big brother right now.”

“Should...we go after them?”

Rubbing at his temple, Shouichi only groaned at first. He dropped his hands and started hitting keys again. “No. No, it's… In terms of the _actual_ risk, it’s pretty damn unlikely that they’ll find a lead just by walking around and dueling people. This city has thousands of duelists, after all. They should also be easy to find if our new friend has kept Ai’s chip on him. ...I'm waiting on confirmation here. ...Ai?"

"That means you can talk again," Yusaku clarified, turning back to his own monitor, and Ai's sigh of relief boomed over the speakers. 

"Oh _wow_ . That was _torture_. But, before anyone yells at me for stalling, the answer is yes. Judai has the chip, and I'll pass along the tracking details, free of charge! Since I'm such a nice AI."

"Well, then let's...get these programs set-up. Somehow." Without turning, Yusaku knew the face that Shouichi was making: it usually appeared when he hit a snag with a new program, leading to deep creases along his forehead. "Hey, have you guys considered that maybe Calamity is trying to drive us into early retirement out of sheer _...confusion_?"

"Retirement? Woah, woah… Let's not get delusional here. Yusaku-chan is _way_ too young for that!"

"...Thanks for including me in that statement too. Oh, wait," was the sarcastic reply from Shouichi. "Anyways, we're three days into this mess and all we have are theories. The pieces don't want to fit together, and if we don't solve it, then there's a chance of...what? The world ending?"

"Judai suggested that was a possibility."

"Pfft. It's really convenient, isn't it? Jin settles in, Ai comes back, and now everything's...moving around again."

"All we can do is respond as best we can."

"Yeah. ...I forgot to mention how it's a shame you're caught up in this too, Yusaku." Shouichi paused, the flutter of keys filling the gap, and Yusaku waited. It seemed like the right thing to do. "Just know that you can rely on me, alright? 'Case you've forgotten, I'm supposed to be the adult here, and...I've got some making up to do for all the times I've let you work yourself to the bone."

His first impulse was to protest. Shouichi had been his partner, fueled by grief and anger and a helplessness that must have burned. But instead he said nothing back, executing a series of quick commands and letting the problem of his clumsy, awkward sentences run in the background. Eventually, with the streetlamps on outside and the last of his coffee gone, he stated, "I...understand your regrets about our partnership from the past, but you did give me a place by your side. I want to thank you for that."

"Hey, I should be thanking you a million times over. I'll get started on that once we've kicked Calamity's ass," Shouichi said, and standing up from his chair, he cracked his knuckles before rotating his shoulders. More stiff cracks followed, Ai making little sounds of disgust, like a picky kid finding too many vegetables on their plate. 

As if on cue, Shouichi's phone rumbled, and when he clicked the screen on, he immediately turned it to face Yusaku. 

"Do you think anyone would notice if I cropped Judai out and made this my new background?"

"Uh. There's a high probability of Judai noticing," Ai commented, and Yusaku rolled his eyes at that. Judging by the angle, Judai had taken the photo, his right arm stretched up and continuing out of the frame. With his other arm around Jin's shoulders, he had likely pulled Jin into the shot, and both of their smiles were wide. Around them were small details of a local arena -- the stalls selling cards, the kids decked out in monster cosplays. 

"Once this is over, we should take all of Team Playmaker to an arena for some low-stakes dueling. You'll need a better dummy deck, naturally, and we'll have to figure something out for Ai, but duels like that are good to let off steam," Shouichi said as he took the phone back, starting a rapid-fire text next, and Yusaku blinked at him. Local dueling tournaments were...a thing. 

The synapses in his brain must have been firing at a fraction of their usual speed. Or. Or something equally...bad. 

Human beings were not immune to fatigue. Not in the slightest.

"Yusaku-chan?"

"I think I have to go home," Yusaku said, bluntly enough for Ai to giggle at him. Shouichi, cracking his knuckles again, threw him an easy smile.

"Sounds good, but let me give you a ride there."

\---

And then Yusaku was shoving open the door of his apartment, kicking off his shoes, and listening to the energetic, bouncy melody of Ai's humming. It wasn't long until the SOLtiS was gliding across the 'kitchen' part of the room with a neatly folded set of pajamas in its arms. 

"Not yet."

"Uh. I think this auditory system is malfunctioning," Ai said, his eyebrows pinching in worry. Walking past him, Yusaku took the stairs down to his bedroom and turned his laptop on. He didn't want to complete another task more complicated than falling into his bed, but some things remained necessary. Ai would understand. 

"I have to check the data corresponding to my interaction with the police earlier today. After that, we can go to bed."

"...That was _today_ ?!" Ai blurted out, Yusaku's desk chair wobbling as the SOLtiS draped one arm over the back. "I'm starting to think that the human division of time is terribly, terribly flawed. It doesn't account for the sheer… Uh. The sheer... _size_ of a Saturday like this."

"If you come up with an alternative, let me know," he said, running a 'somewhat legal' program. The SOLtiS operated with an audible whirl of its systems, simulating human breaths but with an edge of something mechanical pushing through. When the doorbell rang, Yusaku stopped typing. Ai had bounced away.

The click of the front door closing was followed by the squeaks of the SOLtiS prancing down the hallway, skipping down the stairs, and then unceremoniously shoving Yusaku's school notes off the dingy table in the corner to make room for three bulging plastic bags. 

"Should I even ask?"

"Yes, because that gives _me_ the opportunity to brag about how amazingly good I am at looking after my human," Ai explained as he tore into the bags and started pulling out the take-away containers. "It's sooooo convenient that more restaurants around here are accepting cryptocurrency. Means I don't have to jump through so many digital hoops."

"I'm…" Yusaku stopped, frowning to himself. There was no denying how strongly the rich smell of hot, enticing food was rerouting his priorities. But- "I need another minute with this."

"Hm. Just don't take too long. The food will get cold, and even worse, _I'll_ get lonely!"

To his credit, Yusaku did not take long at all, expertly navigating the familiar database and checking the entries by the officers he had spoken with. His drone had not warranted a single mention. That resolved one of his many worries, and, with a tired sigh, he joined his waiting AI at the small table. Where the checkered tablecloth, plastic flowers, and candles had come from was a complete mystery. 

Ai, resting his chin on his joined hands, gave him a smug grin before batting his eyelashes outrageously. 

"Well?"

"I'm not sure I want to know how you've been earning money," Yusaku said plainly, breaking apart the chopsticks. Ai chuckled with the entire body of the SOLtiS, the shoulders quickly bobbing up and down. 

"I'll save the tales of my enterprising brilliance for another day, and- Oh, dig in! Not much point in waiting for me," Ai added cheekily, and Yusaku poked at the lid of one container. Inside were nearly sliced rows of grilled vegetables with a thick red sauce and nuts spread over them. In another was what looked like a thin-crust pizza draped with leafy greens and onions.

"Thank you."

The table vibrated when Ai's leg banged into the underside. "Ah, come on… I-It's no problem! Taking care of each other is...what we should be doing anyways."

At that, Yusaku just smiled at him. There was a persistent strangeness to it all -- that he was at _home_ and eating while Link VRAINS remained offline, Calamity was on the loose, and the other members of Team Playmaker were at work gathering data. And yet, it would be misguided to analyze the situation so simply. He needed this pause to strengthen himself. Supporting others would be impossible if he allowed himself to break.

He really could break.

Ai was the perfect distraction from the myriad thoughts and theories churning inside his head. Ai looked at him with the flickering candlelight sending bits of orange and red onto those honey-gold eyes, and when he wasn't prodding at the various dishes with a thinly veiled curiosity, he was enticing Yusaku to join him in conversation -- as if he was simply crooking one finger in a 'come here' motion and Yusaku, content to because this was _Ai_ , let himself be pulled in. 

"Sooo, if that duel continued…" For dramatic effect, Ai trailed off, 'kicking' at a sauce packet with two long fingers. "Well, we can argue all night about if Link VRAINS crashing was a genuine accident or something nefariously orchestrated behind the scenes, but the _real_ issue is if my beloved Playmaker would've won or not."

"I don't know what that final card was."

"True."

"Although, his confidence in that card… I could sense it," Yusaku heard himself say, his stare dropping to the table. Even from behind that custom skin, so many aspects of Judai had shown through. "I don't think he was bluffing."

"Yeah, same. Still, I don't exactly _want_ to praise an upstart opponent like him too much."

“He understood the mechanics of my lock. To break it, he had activated a quick-play fusion spell,” Yusaku summarized, contemplating the sheer amount of food that was still crowding the small table. The table had never been in such a state before, and, picking at a towering pasta dish with his eyebrows raised, he continued. “It’s possible that he was going to fuse with one of my monsters.”

Some chaos ensued when Ai, flailing, almost flipped the table by accident. The food survived, thankfully, and the AI sputtered in place for a few seconds, blinking owlishly. Yusaku found himself scooping more of the pasta onto the empty container that he had commandeered and then repurposed a bowl. “T-That’s just rude! Like… _What_?!”

“He hadn’t revealed a monster from his extra deck. Therefore,” Yusaku stated, “it’s unlikely that he was going to fuse with Elemental Hero Prisma. It’s possible he had a fusion monster that could use Elemental Hero Liquid Soldier as a material, and-”

“-And one of _your_ monsters?”

“It’s only a theory.”

“So then… _What_ was the point of Prisma being on the field?!”

“He still had a card remaining in his hand, and considering the focus of his deck, he might have wanted to fuse another monster within the same turn, perhaps as a back-up plan in case I could counter him somehow.”

“...Sure. That...fits,” Ai grumbled, crossing his arms, and when Yusaku dropped his chopsticks to the side and closed the nearest container, Ai’s cheerful grin returned in full force. “Well, well… It seems you’ve enjoyed yourself…”

“I’m a student. I like free food.”

Snorting, Ai jumped up to his feet and twirled in place, his curly hair fanning out in waves, “Typical Yusaku-chan! Blunt as always. But, ah, that’s charming in it’s own way… Alas, I remain smitten.”

“Did you mean to order this much stuff?” Yusaku asked as he gathered the leftovers in two of the bags, Ai needing both hands to express his emotions. Currently, Ai was ‘annoyed’, hands on his hips.

“Uh, _yeah_ ? I am _aware_ of the concept of ‘leftovers’.”

Rolling his eyes, Yusaku headed for the stairs, the SOltiS patting after him on its socked feet: purple with Linkuribohs on them. “If Judai comes back late, he might not have had a chance to eat anything. Did you account for that, Ai?”

“Nnnn…,” was the grumble from the SOLtiS and as Yusaku shoved everything into the otherwise-empty fridge, Ai let out a massive sigh. “I mean, he’s not going to be much use to us if he’s starving, so…”

"I told Kusanagi-san to give him my spare key."

"Ah. I...definitely wasn't wondering to myself how the caped crusader was going to get in later. Ha. Haha. Definitely...not."

Straightening again, Yusaku looked at him, the messy fall of Ai’s hair at odds with the sleek dress shirt, vest, and suit pants, all in royal shades of purple or glossy black. “Let’s go to bed,” he said, and instead of gleefully spinning off down the hallway, Ai just grinned a way that made those honey-gold eyes tighten at the edges. 

“Ohohohoh, in due time, my dear. But first, you _did_ promise to take part in my Ai-exclusive massage-slash-cuddle session. The precision of my modified hands will surely banish all remainders of your stress from the field! Or...something. Get downstairs!” Ai gleefully ordered, snapping one arm to the side and pointing down the hallway, and with a yawn that he didn't bother to cover, Yusaku started down the familiar route. 

"Just try not to break anything important," was his sarcastic comment, and Ai just laughed in a way that could not be described as 'reassuring'.

\---

Although, Ai must have done his research on the anatomy of the human back, given that Yusaku was _out_ within seconds. 

Three hours later, he was wide awake again, and the unfortunate truth was that no massage -- no matter how deeply Ai could press those chilled fingers between tensed muscles and near hard bone -- would have been able to make those 'remainders of his stress' vanish, as his stress had a very real and an active source. 

The SOLtiS had powered down, lying in a loose curve by Yusaku's side with a muted teal pulsing in the hollow of its throat. Yusaku pulled the blankets over Ai before he carefully scooted out of bed, grabbed his laptop, and headed up the stairs. He could feel that Ai was...quiet. The energy of him faint but pulsing out rhythmically. While an Ignis didn't sleep in the human sense, it was feasible for Ai, left to his devices, to become preoccupied with his own projects. Since there currently weren’t any sticky notes attached to Yusaku’s laptop or his _face_ , Ai didn’t have any pressing news to report. Therefore, it was best to leave Ai undisturbed.

Ai needed his own form of rest, after all.

Ai needed that just as Yusaku needed to get _up_ and start picking through the tangled web trailing over this city. The main room was the largest of his apartment. If he set up in the far corner inside the kitchen nook, then it was possible for the slight flutter of his fingers over the keys not to disturb Judai. That was the plan, at least.

Although, there was another perspective to consider, namely that of the unspoken presence that, even in the hallway, he could sense the attention of. He knew what Yubel’s portrait looked like. He had seen their wings in the flesh, intricate constructions of scales, membranes, bones, and spikes. He had watched their heterochromatic irises push through Judai’s own.

Judai’s battered coat had been thrown over the back of the couch at some point earlier, and Yusaku could hear the steady cycle of someone else breathing deeply. An old-model duel disk was propped up against the bookshelf. A pair of weathered boots lay in a pile by the door, knocked into Yusaku’s sneakers with the worn-out soles and the cracked sides.

And so, standing barefoot in his kitchen while that _watched_ feeling intensified, Yusaku picked the most straightforward option. Pivoting towards the counter, he dug around for a clean cup.

“Morning. You want one too?”

Yusaku glanced over his shoulder, finding no visible difference. Judai was still out in that tangle of limbs. But he knew something had changed all the same, as if the temperature had dropped slightly. He continued his instant coffee routine, and then a voice rasped against the quiet of that morning. It was smooth with a teasing quality that made him turn around again. He peered at the plain surroundings.

“While I appreciate the offer,” Yubel stated, languid, “I really must decline. Such...things don’t appeal to me.”

“That's like something Ai would say,” Yusaku murmured back as he clicked the kettle off and stirred the flavour pack in. Shouichi had threatened to buy him an actual coffee maker on several occasions, usually whenever he came over and had to step into this room with blatant trepidation, as if not owning a coffee maker would doom the human race. With his laptop on the far end of the narrow counter and his only stool moved over, Yusaku’s office space was complete, and he could have left it at that. While he untangled his earbuds, Yubel spoke again, a whisper over his shoulder.

“Evidently, your eyes have yet to adapt to the darkness. Perhaps I should apologize for remaining as a phantom in this space.” 

“I’ve had stranger things happen to me. It’s fine,” he replied, popping in one ear bud, and the roll of Yubel’s chuckle gradually faded from the room. That was his cue to start working.

Unfortunately, ‘working’ translated to him glaring at his screen rather quickly. Because-

Because there was _nothing_.

Link VRAINS was still down. Speculation ran rampant about Calamity’s next moves, but there had been no overt attacks, and therefore-

Therefore, Playmaker had nothing to target. There was no goal besides the vague outline of an enemy to pursue. Magnetized, he wanted to soar out and stop the source of this chaos, but he could not. He could only parse more and more data, of which there was too _much_. Any approach his team could form would remain weak without a clue. A hint. 

He reached for his nearly empty cup.

It was now full.

It was 5:04 A.M. Ai had yet to appear, and Judai’s snores pushed in through his earbuds, now that his music was off. That left only one possibility.

“Thanks,” he said, and laughter from an invisible source flitted through the air. 

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLOT: Since Yusaku is a smart-as-hell guy, I had to go pretty over-the-top with the plot here and keep parts of it very tangled-up, so to speak. After chapter 10 or so, there will be more...clarity. Probably. ...I swear this is all going somewhere.
> 
> Yusaku: someone buy this guy better furniture. please. Ai???


	10. Chapter 10

\---

At 6:12 A.M., he heard the dilapidated couch squeak in protest. He then lost track of Judai amongst the reports on Link VRAINS crowding his laptop’s small screen. Therefore, when Judai suddenly turned the kitchen sink on at full blast, it did make him jump. 

“Ah, morning!” Judai announced, followed by a yawn. “I take it you can’t settle down either?”

“I’ve slept for long enough,” Yusaku answered, and Judai, grinning at him for a beat, wheeled away and downed his entire glass of water. When he returned, he might have startled Yusaku again. Might have.

Maybe.

“It’s all kinda like a duel, this situation with Calamity. We’re getting bombarded by all these details, these new cards we haven’t seen before. So, it’s hard to figure out the combo before it hits.”

“...Sure.”

“Not one for card game comparisons, huh?” Judai joked before popping open the fridge. “Hang on. Did you and Ai throw a party without me?”

“That would be unlikely,” Yusaku said, deadpan, and he nodded at Judai’s ‘can I have some?’ face. Although, it was a little uncanny -- how quickly Judai seemed to know where the few utensils and plates were in his kitchen, small as it was. 

Perhaps Yubel was involved.

And perhaps Yusaku really didn’t have the brain space to indulge in such idle curiosity. He shoved his hair back and took a deep drink of his somewhat-warm coffee. 

“Since you seem kinda stressed, I should probably hold back on asking you for a favour,” Judai commented as he loaded up a clean bowl. Still in his jeans and ‘Playmaker’ shirt from the night before, he should have looked less alert and _present_ than he did.

“I can always say ‘no’,” Yusaku answered, and Judai, chuckling, shook his head. 

“Weeeeell, yesterday you said that it was very, very unlikely for my cards to have crashed the virtual world, but that timing? It’s bothering me,” Judai admitted with a shrug, and Yusaku blinked at him. Right. He had said that. “So, this morning, would you mind checking them over for me? Or...for Yubel’s sake, at least? I’m definitely driving them-” Judai stopped abruptly, and when he laughed again, Yusaku knew that it was because of a _different_ conversation. He waited until Judai was ‘back’.

“I need to check over some...things,” Yusaku stated with a pointed look at his laptop. “After that, I can help out.”

“Sure. No rush!”

He did not rush, and yet in the blink of an eye, he was transferring his laptop to the coffee table, digging out the USB device from an often-forgotten drawer under the even-more-forgotten TV at the far end of the room, and sitting next to Judai on the couch. Judai, who had seemingly inhaled his first breakfast and was now starting on a second one. Yusaku held out his right hand, and Judai blinked at it, all question marks.

“Your cards.”

Again, he had the feeling that a joke was told over that other channel, mainly because Judai’s usual grin turned its brightness up. “Alright, alright. Just a sec.”

“I need the extra deck as well.”

“Hear that? So don’t cause trouble for Playmaker, alright?” Judai said at his deck holster as he slid the battered cards out, fanned them once, and then handed two neat collections over to Yusaku. Opening the device with one hand, Yusaku quickly transferred the cards inside, closed the lid, and opened a program to begin the analysis. At this short distance, each fidget from Judai was noticeable. “This is...kinda spooky.”

“It shouldn’t take long.”

“Ha. That’s...convenient.”

"While your deck list will appear here," Yusaku explained, gesturing at the screen and suppressing a flinch when Judai leaned over, "I don't have to read the card text. The results of the scan are more important."

Judai moved back and promptly shoved a chunk of reheated pasta into his mouth. "So, you _are_ curious about my cards then."

"I didn't say that."

"But you're waiting to see them in action instead of taking the easy way out."

"I didn't say that either."

"You didn't have to," Judai observed. "Well then, we have no choice but to have a rematch. Interrupted duels are the _worst_."

Yusaku changed the subject, the green progress bar on the screen steadily growing. "Do you have anything to report?"

"Hm?"

"From last night," Yusaku clarified, and Judai perked up, smacking his bowl down against the coffee table. Their knees bumped together. 

Judai was a very... _alive_ person. Yusaku's brain refused to give him a better word for it. He felt like one should exist. 

"I mostly just confirmed that Jin is a _killer_ duelist. He's got this whole... mastermind persona. Like, he can piece together his opponents deck and react in such a composed way. I _knew_ he was a smart guy, only now I have concrete proof of that."

"I see."

"Although, the big brother required some...loosening up," Judai said, and when Yusaku arched an eyebrow, Judai let out an awkward giggle. "Don't get me wrong! He's great, but it took an hour or so for everything to...chill out."

"...Right."

"Ahhh, don't sound so skeptical, Playmaker. I swear, by the time we packed it in, the whole crew was having a good time. Well, a _relatively_ good time considering that the Light of Destruction is out there," Judai finished, shrugging, and Yusaku blurted something out that he had not pre-planned. The syllables were just _there_ , flat and even and making Judai look at him with a puzzled tilt of his head. 

"Time is moving too quickly."

Judai did not ask him to clarify. With the analysis at 73%, the display had nothing for Yusaku to examine, to latch his mind onto. 

"I know," was what Judai said at 87%, his expression blank despite the flickering of his amber-green eyes. "If we go too hard, we risk running out of steam by the time the villain really appears. If we mess around and do nothing, we risk being caught off guard."

"Yes. I understand that," Yusaku muttered, and Judai nodded. 

"Yeah, of course. But we owe it to ourselves and those we've bonded with not to give into despair."

There had to be a more eloquent response that Yusaku could have made. And yet, Yusaku just sighed, cracked his neck, and muttered, "I also have a history test tomorrow."

The entire couch shook when Judai laughed, folding in half and covering his mouth with one hand, and it didn't ease the knot in Yusaku's chest, nor the pressure collected over his tired shoulders. But it did make him want to smile despite it all. 

The progress bar beeped, and he looked away as Judai raised himself again, rubbing at his eyes. 

"The cards are valid," Yusaku said.

"Oh, sweet." When Judai made a 'grabby hands' motion at the laptop, Yusaku ejected the USB device and retrieved the cards inside. It did not escape his attention how Judai cradled them against his chest before sliding them back into the deck holster. The analysis remained on the screen, next to the simplified deck list. 

In bold characters, there it was -- one copy, the spell card Super Polymerization. Judai could not have been referring to any other card during the duel.

Yusaku closed the program. 

"Do...you think someone was watching us in the virtual world and waiting to crash it with the help of the maintenance team? Or, maybe by _manipulating_ the maintenance team?" Judai asked, and Yusaku waited for him to continue. "Still, it could really just be a fluke, like guessing someone's phone pass code on the first try. Just 'cause it's unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible."

"If there was someone watching us, I plan on finding them."

"Alright. But don't forget," Judai chided as he stood up and cracked his shoulders, "that I got your back, Playmaker. The same goes for Yubel too, naturally."

Yusaku nodded once, and the stomp-stomp-stomp in the distance could only be the SOLtiS, now throwing the door to the lower level open and strutting down the hallway. Predictably, Ai had those purple pajamas on, his multi-toned hair in a messy bun held together with violet clips, and he struck a pose by the doorway.

"Morning, nerds."

"...'Nerds'?" Judai repeated dubiously, and Yusaku was resigned to his fate when Ai sauntered around the couch and then fell over him, Ai's arms loosely looped around his shoulders. The SOLtiS, despite Ai's modifications and improving control, could be very heavy at times. Now was one of those times.

"Actually, it's kinda weird for Yusaku-chan to be up and about so early, especially on a weekend. Which-" Suddenly, Ai leapt back, somehow dodging the coffee table, and the _stre_ _ak_ of emotions that pushed into Yusaku were too crowded to decipher. He needed to ask Ai, although Ai had already launched into a statement. The face of the SOLtiS was too blank for that rushed voice. Ai was preoccupied with something else. "Hey. If we could link one person to both the dirigible incident and the device hack, then that would be a major breakthrough, wouldn't it? Ai-dditionally, if that person was a victim, then we would have a possible target of Calamity. We could then use this information to reverse engineer what their game plan _really_ is."

"The problem is isolating a person like that, if one even exists," Yusaku replied, and although Ai's constructed eyes lifted up, he could tell that his partner was barely present, entangled in this new idea. Sparks of energy pressed in under his skin. 

"Following our dirigible simulation, we concluded that fifty-seven people would have been in the most probable destruction zone, meaning that a successful attack would have likely... _harmed_ them specifically," Ai summarized, tripping around the world that bothered him and briskly moving on. "However, what we _didn't_ do was stop and interpret the data in the context of a Thursday morning at a business hotel."

"...People at a place like that are usually in a rush. They wouldn't still be in their rooms, by default," Judai said, and Ai snapped his fingers, although his expression still lagged behind -- neutral despite the energy coursing through him. 

"Bingo. Yes, it's all very tentative, and, _yes_ , I'm probably ignoring a few variables here, _but_ here's the thing. If we can show that at least one of these guests who was _very_ likely to be in their room had also been uniquely targeted in the device hack, then we have a clue as to _who_ exactly Calamity wants to mess with."

"What do you mean by 'targeted'?" Yusaku asked, and Ai jumped in with an answer.

"It’s just my intuition, so don’t take this too seriously. But, uh, if I decided to roleplay as a bad g-Ai for this game, I would hide the purposeful hack of a single device or several connected devices by hacking a _lot_ of devices simultaneously."

"We...would confirm something about Calamity's approach to these attacks if we could isolate a person like that," Yusaku mumbled to himself, and there was a brief pause where he opened a video chat with the Kusanagi brothers and let Ai summarize his theory again. While Jin had reacted by blinking the sleep out of his eyes, Shouichi took the more direct approach. 

"Ai, there's _reaching_ , and then there's what you're doing, which is next-level reaching. Evolved reaching. I'm...not awake enough to _describe_ the amount of reaching… The building could've been targeted for insurance fraud for all we know! Or just because it's _tall_ and was an easy target!"

“But you’re still going to help out,” was what Jin chimed in with, and Yusaku watched as Shouichi sulkily tilted his large coffee cup back and grumbled out something ending with ‘Well, _obviously_.’

As Ai paced the room, a viewscreen bobbed by his head. The SOLtiS looked past it. 

“Maybe we need to get wild with our ideas. After all, since a SOLtiS _was_ used in the attack and we got this magical space light in the city, our opponent might not be...one-hundred-percent human."

A flare of uncertainty.

“Ai, it's okay,” Yusaku said, and the SOLtiS blinked once, refocusing. The pupils dilated quickly, and Ai bounced on his heels once.

“Anyways, since ‘Ai’ endeavor to be helpful, I’ve already narrowed down our fifty-seven possible targets to just four. The inclusion criteria are pretty simple. First, the guests had to have their trip planned to Den City at _least_ two weeks in advance, so that Calamity could feasibly rig-up some bombs, plan their infiltration of the mooring site, and whatnot in time. Second, they had to have a prior public or semi-public commitment that would keep them _in_ their hotel rooms for at least one hour on Thursday morning. These commitments turned out to be, like, virtual conference appearances or podcast interviews, if anyone’s curious. Third, and finally, they had to still be in Den City for the device hack.”

“Seems...like a start,” Shouichi concluded. “Plus, it’s not smart for all of us to fixate on Link VRAINS. This could be a possible ‘Team Two’ sort of...pursuit.” He yawned, and Jin shuffled over on the brothers’ sectional couch to empty more of the coffee pot into Shouichi’s cup. Clearing his throat, Yusaku asked a pertinent question.

“Who are these four guests?”

"Ta-da!" Ai announced with a wave of one hand, a new window opened on Yusaku's laptop. Bumping into his shoulder, Judai blinked at it, offering no comment yet. Considering Shouichi's grumbled 'How does he _do_ that?', Yusaku assumed that the brothers now had access to the same data. Four names. Four portraits. Four brief biographies. 

"So, we have a...journalist, a security expert, an ex-politician, and a high-profile lawyer," Judai stated plainly, and Ai let out a pleased hum. 

"Yeppy yep. Turns out that none of the staff were scheduled to be on the affected floors, so we're left with these fine professionals to analyze as our 'group of interest'."

Scanning Ai's report, Yusaku felt himself frown at the screen. Two of the names were well-known within Den City: Seki Ayumi, the journalist, being an outspoken advocate for stricter laws on AI service machines that interacted with normal civilians, and Nishiyama Takahiro, the former politician, having left his office to openly raise money for the development of an automated defense system that made use of swarms of micromachines. As Playmaker, Yusaku had to be suspicious of those with such strong views and consolidated support from different factions. 

"...Wait a second." It was Shouichi, and before Yusaku could even blink, he had grabbed his own laptop from somewhere offscreen. A few keystrokes later, and he was gaping at that screen, his eyes bulging, and muttering, "I goddamn _knew it_."

"Knew what?" Jin asked, craning his neck to the side, and Shouichi answered immediately, his fingers a blur over the video feed. 

"Ai, I'll do you one better. What if I could find someone who was linked to the hotel, the hack, _and_ the crash in Link VRAINS?"

" _W-What?!_ " Ai yelped, and Shouichi, folding his laptop under one arm and grabbing a coat, nodded at a confused Jin. 

"How about we have an official Team Playmaker breakfast and talk this out?"

\---

The 'Team Playmaker breakfast' took place approximately ten minutes later at Yusaku's apartment, with Shouichi dropping a take-out carton with four cups of coffee in it on the table and then cracking his shoulders. "I mean it, Yusaku. I'm getting you a coffee maker for your birthday."

"I won't use it."

"That's...besides the point. It's like a smoke detector. You need one."

"Do you have all the data you need?" Yusaku asked, partially because he was curious and partially because Ai was vibrating with barely contained impatience. Jin, dragging over the stool from the counter to the coffee table, perched cross-legged on it, and then he, like everyone else, fixated on Shouichi's laptop. It was placed on the very center of the coffee table, with its owner kneeling behind it on the floor and then hitting a few keys.

"As of right now, yeah. The video I just, err, 'borrowed' from SOL Technologies should support my theory."

"Computer crimes," Jin observed with a small laugh, and yet his gaze remained serious underneath his dark bangs.

Because the human mind could make important connections at seemingly random times, Yusaku realized just as Shouichi cracked his knuckles and began to speak that this, currently, was the most people who had ever been in his apartment at once. 

He decided to analyze that later. 

"Our security expert," Jin said with a tap to his monitor, "is, more specifically, a data security expert. Dr. Heinrich Leibe has been doing private consultations for big firms and start-ups all over the globe for the past five years. According to Ai's findings, he was set to arrive at Den International Airport on Wednesday night, with his panel at a virtual conference happening early Thursday morning. While it later was canceled for safety concerns, he originally was also going to attend the opening of Den University's new big data center on Saturday."

"...Therefore, he would've been in his room, within a reasonable degree of certainty, when the dirigible fell," Ai added, and Shouichi nodded at him before continuing. 

"True, but that alone is pretty flimsy evidence. What _really_ isolates the doctor as our person of interest is his visit to SOL Technologies on Friday."

"Did he have a meeting scheduled there or something?" Jin asked.

"Negative to that. While I haven't found his personal calendar yet, I _can_ confirm that he showed up suddenly at headquarters and asked to speak with Dr. Aoyama, aka the head of maintenance for Link VRAINS."

"The… _What_ ?!" Ai exclaimed, expressing all of Yusaku's own surprise simultaneously. "How did we miss _that_? I cross-referenced all hotel guests with-"

"Human error should never be underestimated," Shouichi said, glancing up from his laptop. "Dr. Leibe showed up at about 11:15 A.M. on Friday and asked the secretary to contact Dr. Aoyama specifically. _However_ , when the secretary typed the message, she wrote his name in English- Or _German_ , technically. Anyways," Shouichi drawled, waving a hand while typing with the other, "the secretary transposed two of the letters, so any text search we did would've only found a Dr. _Liebe_. I wouldn't have noticed this myself if I hadn't spent time yesterday pouring over the maintenance team's communications."

"But are we sure it's the right guy? There could be another doctor in town with a similar name," Jin observed, and when Shouichi turned his laptop around to face the couch, Yusaku was promptly squished between Ai and Judai, with Jin then crowding in from the left and making Ai squish him even more. The image on the screen was of a modern lobby, frozen in time. Only a few scattered people occupied the green-grey chairs positioned around a low sculpture, and the far wall was flanked by two curved desks. For the receptionists, presumably. 

"The crucial part for us is that the device hack occurred _everywhere_ in Den City at 11:25 exactly. If the note for Dr. Aoyama is correct, then we'll see Dr. Leibe come in right before the attack. We'll also be able to see how he reacts. According to the next note sent by the secretary, the doctor left the building suddenly."

Jin exhaled. "Alright. So, let's see what he does… Maybe he'll do something weird."

Shouichi hit play, and Yusaku watched with Ai's chin on his shoulder and two chilled hands gripping his right leg. In Ai's profile, the doctor had appeared as a thin, bespectacled man with a wiry mustache and a strong slouch.

The person who took small steps forward when the automatic doors of the lobby open looked like the same man, only with a plain grey hat pulled down over his face, the brim almost touching the tip of his nose, and a scarf balled up over his chin. With his hands buried deep in his brown suit's pockets, he appeared unsteady, his route towards the nearest desk interrupted by that swaying gait. A short exchange occurred, the young man in a plain grey shirt and a SOL-Tech headset greeting the doctor before tapping away at a touchscreen. 

The doctor then sat down in one of the delicate chairs, on the very edge of it. He pulled out his phone when everyone else in the lobby did, because those gilded, seamless displays that banned every wall in that lobby had rapidly transformed. They now displayed a single word in unison -- CALAMITY. 

As the timestamp confirmed, this was precisely at 11.25. And-

"Stop the video."

The words were from Judai, who was leaning forward with his eyes narrowed and his expression rigid, focused. Shouichi, shifting away from the laptop again, arched both of his eyebrows. 

"You see something?"

"His phone. It's different."

And Judai was right. Squinting, Yusaku could make out the top left-hand corner of Dr. Leibe's display, their view of it obstructed by his arm and part of the sculpture. Regardless, it was clear -- in black characters against a white background, the message strewn across the doctor's phone did not read 'CALAMITY', as all other screens in that paused video did. Instead, the message began with 'LEAVE THE BUILDING NOW OR YOUR S-'. 

"What the…?" Jin breathed out, and like Ai, Yusaku himself was silenced by the _torrent_ of possibilities flitting through his mind. This was a unique message. No other such messages from Calamity had been reported to the authorities or to the media. Their own analyses had uncovered no anomalies, and yet, here was one.

Here was a scrap of evidence, held in the still hands of a man with terror in the process of twisting his face.

"Can you resume the video?" Judai asked next, and after Shouichi hit the spacebar, they collectively watched the doctor pocket his phone, yank the scarf higher over his face, and then rush out of the lobby and onto the sidewalk. Seconds later, the screens returned to normal, an advertisement for Link VRAINS looping endlessly by the secretaries who scrambled to deal with the agitated guests. Although no sound was available, it was obvious that an argument had broken out. Shouichi stopped the video. 

Judai was already on his feet and moving a black hoodie out of his bag. "Alright… Anyone know where this guy is?" he asked while pulling it over his head and then looping a tattered scarf around his chin.

"There's still a lot here for my brother, Fujiki-san, and Ai to analyze," Jin noted, straightening up, and when Judai adjusted his deck holster instead of answering, he added, "Uh, don't you think we should get some more info before diving into this?"

Shooting Jin a knowing grin, Judai responded with, "Getting more info isn't going to help us out if this guy leaves town and disappears first." And-

And although Yusaku had too many approaches to parse through, different threads of information vying for his attention, he still grabbed his laptop, pulled it onto his knees, and started a rudimentary search for the doctor. Judai did have a point, as each and every passing second could contribute to that lead becoming lost, passing through their fingers. And-

He got it.

"Yusaku-chan?" Ai asked softly, and then he jumped out of the way when Yusaku shot up and went for his shoes. "W-Woah there! What's-?"

"The doctor booked a train to the airport last night," he said as the others scrambled to their feet. Taking his duel disk, he attached it to his wrist, and Ai flowed in, the SOLtiS sagging in place before stiffly sitting back down on the couch. It was time to go. "That train leaves in an hour."

\---

Since the airship had fallen on Thursday, the busiest public spaces of Den City had undergone an overt change. 

Areas with dense populations such as transportation hubs had their security bolstered. Therefore, a row of guards in black combat gear had been positioned outside of Den City Main Station. Although, much of the security at a place like this would be invisible to the average visitor. Despite his hood being pulled down and a flu mask covering the bottom half of his face, Yusaku took up a vantage point behind a decorative column near the main entrance. The cameras could prove problematic when intercepting the doctor, if that would even be possible. 

High-speed rail lines looped around the massive structure, the vehicles streaming out regularly as blurs of white and red. The security abroad the trains themselves would, predictably, be more strict than usual. Every seat abroad Dr. Leibe's train had already been reserved. No other train would reach the airport before his boarding time. 

The flight itself had been fully booked. 

These factors pressurized the moment; if they were going to find the doctor, it would be here in the minutes before he reached the platform. The alternative strategies that Yusaku formed and then considered were all unacceptable. They carried too many risks for such low chances at a reward. 

_"None of us can work on stopping Calamity if we're being questioned for posing as a railway conductor,"_ was how Shouichi had summarized it over their team call, Yusaku's compact mic attached to the one earbud that he had in. While Ai's consciousness was inside the duel disk, the Ignis was also working to scrape as much viable data from the train station as he could, and that left Ai muted to Yusaku's senses. Like a murmur of a distant voice. 

Judai and Jin, effortlessly passing the security scans, had already moved inside to watch over the platform. Shouichi had taken up a position by the secondary entrance. 

With a slight rustle of static, Ai was back on the call. "Uh, as a FYI, it looks a _lot_ like the doctor went straight back to his new hotel room after visiting SOL Tech. I haven't found anything suggesting that he, like, went out on the town or anything for Saturday either."

"So we'll have to assume that he’s stayed put until now," Shouichi stated, a bit of road noise trickling in, and Yusaku crossed his arms, leaning back more against the column. It was a fair conclusion to draw. 

"Kinda weird that he waited _this_ long to leave the city, if he really was being threatened by some shadowy organization with a penchant for dropping dirigibles."

Yusaku could answer that query easily, his gaze never leaving the plaza that preceded the station's wide glass doors. "His ticket is booked for a train operated by DEMM Rail. The company has strongly advocated against the use of navigation AIs for high-speed rail that would replace human conductors. Their reputation is that of an 'anti-AI' transit company, even though that's not accurate."

"...Ah. At...least he's got a reason to be so picky. I guess," Ai grumbled, and Yusaku cut off his next sentence. An elderly man with a brown suit, pulled-down hat, a scarf balled up by his chin had just exited a taxi. "I see him."

The doctor waited while the driver got out to remove his suitcase from the trunk. He waited with a strong hunch and one leg visibly trembling, even from Yusaku's vantage point on the opposite side of the open plaza. But, communicating with him. That was still problematic. 

He was their lead. 

Yusaku stared hard as their lead took hesitant steps towards a wire-frame bench and sat down, a gaunt hand perched on the handle of his suitcase. The stream of arrivals to the station continued past him. The line of armored security guards were perpendicular to the bench. 

"I know what he's doing," Yusaku said, interrupting Shouichi by accident. A pause, and then he kept going. "He wants to be visible to discourage anyone or anything from approaching him as he waits for the train. He could call for help. That’s his counter move.”

"Should we stay at the platform?" Judai asked, and Yusaku, biting his lip, assessed the situation again. 

And again. 

"Yes. His strategy could still change closer to boarding time.”

Shouichi was next. "Alright. Just hold on a second. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Kusanagi-san, you don't have to-"

"I got it."

Ai had said that.

Ai was a steady pulse of energy that beat within the duel disk like a heart.

Connecting the pieces of Ai's plan proved to be extremely simple. Yusaku did it while Shouichi and Jin, justifiably so, argued with the AI. Neither one of them could see the city bus as it pulled up to the drop-off station near the taxis and let a group of passengers off. From within that group was a flicker of muted energy, because Ai was also controlling a SOLtiS. The energy beat in tandem with Ai's collected self.

"It's untraceable. I've made sure of that. Actually, I've had it in the back of your closet for three weeks now, mostly for spare parts, which...says a _lot_ about your cleaning habits- Anyways," Ai blurted out, speaking over the team channel and yet speaking to Yusaku. Plainly. Obviously. Because there had not been the time to process the implications of this, and if Ai could be in danger, then- "The face plate is generic. None of my own tech is in it, so even if things go sideways, who cares? I'll drop my connection to it and zoom back to the duel disk. I also ate up all incriminating data on my way here, so no worries there."

The approach could work. It could work more effectively than anything that the other team members could do alone or in tandem. Ai's confidence was tangible to him. 

"You thought that this might happen," Yusaku stated.

"I-"

"Tell me the next time you do something like this."

If Ai had been a steady heartbeat before, then he was a wavering, unsteady signal now -- caught off guard, losing the structure of his thoughts and then scrambling to recover. He did recover, and Yusaku pressed his bare palm over the duel disk. His next deep breath seeped into Ai, his own calm flowing in, and, simply like that, Ai was like before -- a heartbeat that had synched up with his own. 

"I will. I'm going to do this, and then I'll become better than I am now. So… Watch over me, okay?"

"I will," he said as the SOLtiS moved away from the crowd and strode out into the open, the center of the plaza. The transfer occurred quickly, more but not all of Ai's self shifting into the artificial body. With a slick black ponytail, black turtleneck, and black slacks with black boots, Ai was indeed easy to track from this distance. The features were new -- a long, straight nose, small forehead, and small mouth. It was like watching someone he knew put on a carnival mask. Even the motions of the body had changed, as the SOLtiS Yusaku knew moved more fluidly. 

Ai sat on the opposite side of the bench and threw an arm over the back of it. The doctor did not bolt. And yet, Yusaku could see how the suitcase handle was gripped tighter: a warning sign that this could still fail so easily.

After a faint crackle, Yusaku heard Ai speak in a different voice. It was muted, with a mechanical stiffness characteristic of the standard SOLtiS models.

"Heyo, Doctor Leibe. It'd be neat if you did me the favor of listening for a bit, since I can say with 100% confidence that I'm not one of _them_. How's that sound? Good, riiight?"

When the doctor answered, the audio seemed... _off_ , like the quality had abruptly dropped and taken with it some characteristics of the human voice. Then, Yusaku made the connection.

The words were being automatically translated, because of course Ai wouldn't be bound to using Dr. Leibe's business-level Japanese.

"I'm doing what your organization asked. Please uphold your end of the bargain," rushed the doctor, and Ai chuckled awkwardly. Yusaku stared at the side of his head. 

"Uh, sorry, sorry, but I wasn't lying. I'm _really_ not one of the Calamity crew."

"You have my statement. Please convey that to your leaders."

"...I'm also not a delivery boy."

"No, of course not. You move like a SOLtiS."

"Thanks for noticing? I guess? But, look," Ai hurriedly stated, "I know that you're about to leave the country. I also know that _they've_ got something over you."

"You know because you're one of their pawns," was the immediate answer, and in the background, Yusaku saw Shouichi settle in near the transposition drop-off zone. They did not speak to each other, letting the conversation continue unimpeded.

"No, since if I was one of their _pawns_ , it would be redundant for me to ask you a bunch of dumb questions. Which, by the way, I would totally like it. Right now."

"I can go to security."

"... _Yeah_ , you could. Or you could help me and my pals stop these villains from going after others.”

“I have no reassurance that you are who you claim to be,” the doctor stated, and Ai whined, frustration bubbling under Yusaku’s skin. “Therefore, it is safer to assume that you are, indeed, one of these villains yourself. Or, more accurately, that whoever controls you is.”

“...Trust me, buddy, I’m more than capable of making my own decisions, for better or worse,” Ai grumbled over their channel in a clearer, far more familiar voice, and then he quickly changed topics. He spoke again with the SOLtiS. “I'll level with you. If I had a better option, I’d be off doing _that_ instead of bugging a guy waiting for a train. I’m not… Uh.” A brief pause, and then the SOLtiS rapidly waved its hands around, the doctor leaning away pointedly. “I-I _like_ people! Really!”

With a tired sigh, the doctor shifted in such a way that, stiffening, Yusaku thought he would stand up. Instead, he slouched in place next. “...Why are you _really_ doing this?” was the muttered question.

“I’m doing this for the same reason you’re skipping town. I have someone who I’m going to protect until my end. ...Listen, I’m not asking you to stay here in this city. There's a low chance of success for me achieving that. Only, without your help, this city might find itself facing a very... _bad_ ending.”

“You already have my message for your masters.”

“...Okay, then here we go,” Ai said, strangely deadpan. He was steady, Yusaku’s own anticipation being slowly pulled in and smoothed out. “If I _had_ to take a stab at it, I’d guess that the person being threatened is your s... _on_ , correct? So, I’ll give you a piece of advice. Once you’re home, take your family and go off the grid for a few weeks, minimum. No phones. No computers. Nothing that would let Calamity get eyes on you.”

“What are you…?” Dr. Leibe trailed off, and Ai briskly continued. 

“So far, Calamity’s big spectacles have used some high-tech components. Therefore, things like long-distance drones or satellites could still be mobilized to observe what you’re doing, but, hey, it’s best not to make it _easy_.”

“...Such a...clear trap. This...must be a trap…”

“Okay. You sure about that, smart guy? So what if it _is_?” Ai ground out, and both Jin and Shouichi reacted to that.

“Hey, Ai, don’t push him too far!”

“Remember that you’re not the villain here, so stop sounding like one, alright!?”

However, when the doctor spoke again, it was only clipped and serious, not panicked. Not hesitant. It was a tone Yusaku had heard in classrooms before, when a strict teacher had already decided on a punishment for a student but was holding back the details. “Ai, be careful,” Yusaku muttered underneath the doctor’s reply. Something had changed, undefined as it was.

The doctor had made a realization. 

“What did you want to ask me?”

Ai’s excitement rose, Yusaku absently stroking the top of the duel disk. Stay focused. Be _careful_.

“How would you describe your, ah, _value_ to Calamity?” Ai began, and the doctor snorted, dismissive. 

And yet, he did answer.

“I can only guess at that. The first and only time they contacted me was after I had scheduled a meeting with Dr. Aoyama at SOL Technologies.”

“I see… And that’s when they threatened your son?”

“Yes. If I did not leave the building immediately, my son’s life would be in danger. Any attempt to return to the building or contact Sol Technologies would warrant ‘retaliation’ as well.”

“...And that’s it?”

“Yes,” the doctor said, inclining his head, and Ai made a ‘thinking’ noise with the SOLtiS. Over their channel, he was a bit more explicit.

“Uh… Ideas? Help? Help with ideas?!”

“Ask him why he went to visit Dr. Aoyama,” Yusaku said quickly, and Ai laughed, sardonic. 

“Oh, yeah. Duh. Thanks for the save!” Ai chirped before switching back to the SOLtiS. “Why did you want to visit Dr. Aoyama?”

“Partially because he was expecting me to. We last spoke at a large conference in Maiami four months ago, and he invited me to visit him whenever I would be in Den City, as we had similar views on how major corporations fail to maintain data security. However,” Dr. Leibe added, dropping to a harsh whisper, “I also suspected that Dr. Aoyama may have neglected to maintain the virtual world of Link VRAINS properly. Recent feedback on the log-in sequence suggests that it may have a serious flaw.”

“Did you... _talk_ to anyone at SoL Tech about this?”

“While we only met briefly, I had the unfortunate impression that Dr. Aoyama is a very...distracted person. Brilliant, of course, but prone to losing his ‘train of thought’,” Dr. Leibe said, which seemed like a diversion until he addressed Ai’s question. “Although, regardless, I respect his work and his position very highly. I feared that making the problem public or conversing with one of his colleagues would potentially damage his reputation.”

“Okay… But as a consequence of being a scatter-brain, you thought he would’ve ignored you if you just, say, gave him a call?”

“I did not assume that. I knew it, as I had also called his personal line twice.”

“...You sure about that? I got some phone records that suggest the opposite.”

A stiff laugh, almost like the older man was pained by it. “I see. Because of a mishap, I had to use a colleague’s spare phone for a few days while mine was repaired. The records would have shown calls with her information attached, not my own.”

“Oh. Makes sense.” Perking up, Ai then said, “Okay, so to summarize, your plan for Friday was to show up, get in a room with this guy, and emphasize why he was being, to put it simply, an idiot.”

“Ideally, that would have happened on Thursday, but considering the event with the blimp, I did not expect to find those at Sol Technologies with the time for visitors.”

Ai, to his credit, only muttered a belated ‘dirigible’ in their channel. To the doctor, he said, “So, in your oh-so-informed opinion, was it likely for Link VRAINS to crash because of this unaddressed ‘problem’?”

“Yes. Following recent legislation on data security, Link VRAINS would need to change...many of its current practices. Evidently, I was too late.” And then he stood up. “I must go. Do with that information what you wish.”

Scrambling, Ai also jumped to his feet. “H-Hold up! I-Isn’t there anything... _else_?”

Dr. Leibe spoke as he adjusted the pull-out handle on the suitcase, Ai plainly watching the gesture. “If you wish, you may have my current theory, which is that Calamity had planned both the attack with the blimp and the message well in advance. I also believe that they closed Link VRAINS by taking advantage of Dr. Aoyama's negligence. My death would only have been a minor feature of their plan, so minor that they could merely repurpose how they implemented their message to remove me without drawing overt suspicion. They may still try to kill me, just as they may still try to kill my son, but if so, then it will be for a different reason. Their plan, as it is, remains intact. It was never disrupted. I was one infinitesimal part of it all.”

“I-”

“To make myself clear, I have not gifted you this information because I believe in the nobility or morality of those you claim to represent,” the doctor snapped out. “I believe you do not represent Calamity. Rather, I believe you represent an organization who aspires to _become_ like Calamity. You want to find them, infiltrate their ranks, and cannibalize them, taking on their resources for your own purposes.”

Ai’s shock rippled up Yusaku’s right arm. “W-What?! H-How dare you!”

“This volatile behaviour is typical amongst recent hacking collectives. They accomplish little because their attention must always be on their peers,” Dr. Leibe said as he yanked the suitcase forward, taking a pointed step towards the station’s main entrance. Ai followed, cautious. The barrier for the SOLtiS, the automatic scanner above the doors, grew nearer. “Well, my artificial companion, I wish your organization luck in the upcoming battle. Just know that soon it will be yourself that is consumed by other opportunists.”

“I-” Ai yelped, and then, dramatically checking over a mechanical shoulder before eyeing the unmoving guards, he lowered his voice. “No lie, I wish you _all_ the best on your upcoming camping trip, but let me just _emphasize_ that I’m not part of a group like that and neither are my _friends_. We aren’t in this for selfish reasons! We don't _want_ to be involved!”

“The humans amongst you can tell themselves that, but I doubt it is true,” the doctor said, striding forward, and the SOLtiS stopped behind the red line marking the ground. Waves crashed within Ai’s self, the depth of that tangled, twisting emotion impossible to determine, and Yusaku straightened up, pushing his earbud in a little more. He took charge.

“The train to the airport will already be in the boarding stage. Jin?”

“I can already see him coming towards the platform. ...I...doubt we’ll get anything else from him. Your thoughts, Judai?”

“...Yeah.”

“‘Yeah’ what?”

“Yeah, let’s back off. There's too much security here."

“Alright. Everyone take the planned-out routes back to Yusaku’s, and we’ll...regroup,” Shouichi stated before walking away, yanking the brim of his ball cap lower, and Yusaku did agree. It was the correct course of action. 

When he glanced back towards the station entrance, the SOLtiS had already merged with a crowd heading towards the buses. Only a fraction of Ai was contained in it, and Ai was again a murmur to Yusaku, already deep in the labyrinth of his own thoughts.

\---

In a moment of doubt, pick three things. Make a list.

There were three obvious ways forward.

First.

Dr. Leibe’s assessment of why he had been targeted could be presumptuous. Further investigation into his recent activities was required, especially into all activities related to SOL Technologies and virtual worlds in general.

Second.

Dr. Aoyama’s role in the crash and his work with Link VRAINs should be further analyzed, given his power within the company and his connection to Dr. Leibe. Every member of his maintenance team needed to be investigated as well.

Third.

The other hotel guests warranted further analysis, and-

Yusaku turned left, cutting down a side street that he normally would have ignored. He preferred the direct route home whenever he had to walk from the train station. However, Ai’s suggested route was beneficial, as it would make it more difficult for any onlookers to track him. 

Rolling with the building wind, an empty can strayed in front of his path, and Yusaku stepped around it, letting his gaze flicker from building to building. The movements of other pedestrians, animals, and other scraps of garbage all prickled against his senses. In small gaps between the clustered-together buildings, there were small lines of pristine blue. The sea. It shone against the heavy grey of the sky above, the clouds like the smudges left behind by pencil marks rubbed at by a cheap eraser.

In contrast, the vibrant blue burned.

The best view of the water bordering Den City was on the outskirts, on the side of the road overlooking the Stardust Road. The house on the nearby hill had remained empty.

Now -- as the chilled air tried to worm its way inside his hoodie, as he waited at a crosswalk for the light to change -- he wanted for Ryoken to be here, so strongly that he could almost imagine the cadence of that voice reaching him. It was possible for him to simply turn his head and find Ryoken there -- self-assured and compelling, ardent. That impulse was buried so deeply, for him to seek out words said with a unique strength bolstering and colouring the syllables. 

He had not seen Ryoken for over four months. 

Ai had only recovered two months ago.

Therefore, Ryoken had seen a version of him driven to the edge of his focus, of his senses. 

By choice, Yusaku would have not been chasing down cyber terrorists inside Link VRAINS on that day, but he had not been given the luxury of a choice: the users hiding behind aliases were planning on attacking infrastructure crucial to the virtual world, and Ai could have been inside that world, somewhere. Yusaku’s research -- his _searching_ \-- had found only fragments of Ai. They had seemed so terrifyingly small: beads of glass being tossed by a rolling sea of data.

When Yusaku had appeared as Playmaker with a gust of digital wind, it was with his duel disk already drawn and his D-Board immediately cutting off the leader of the group’s escape plan, their avatars colliding above a cyber capital drenched in neon lights and the chaos of thousands of simultaneous duels. At this height, Yusaku had been like a hawk diving into a flock of crows and pinning one down with a hunter’s talons. Because he had wanted to end this, quickly.

He had expected for his opponent to use an illegal mod to trap him in a high-stakes duel. The glowing tether that appeared around his neck, doubled by one around his opponent’s, had already factored into his calculations, and the Cyberse cards had hummed, had called out to him. In those blurred moments, spinning in tandem with the mad currents and letting the expanse below him fade and fade, those cards had felt more real than anything else in his life. More than the rain on his walks home from school. More than the shadows of his downstairs room. More than the dull display of his duel disk. 

The noose had tightened in accordance to the life points he lost. It should not have hurt. The new safety features implemented by SOL Technologies should have prevented that. And yet, it had ached regardless of that. 

In two turns, he had taken out the leader, the avatar now immobilized on its D-Board with the glowing tether, and then he had turned his sights to the crows descending from above him, the lines of their attacks already reaching for him. It had not mattered. The cards would not fail him, and they did not.

With a static crackling in the back of his head, he had finally straightened on his D-Board again with a ring of captives suspended above the city. He had known what to do -- which admins to anonymously contact, what data to leave behind for the investigators to analyze. He had executed those actions efficiently, without thinking, and then, before he could have logged off, his movements had turned sluggish. He had tried to open a menu. It had been greyed out.

The wind had prickled strangely as it flitted between his fingers, and, no, it shouldn’t have felt like that -- tangible, _strong_. The experience had to be a side-effect of the forced-duel mod, his senses now reacting differently to the stimuli in the virtual world. Without interruption. Without a buffer to make pain only a suggestion. 

In exhaustion, he had slipped off the D-Board. 

The wind had screamed past him. In a terrifying act of simplicity, his vision had gone dark, his thundering heartbeat had roared out, and, simultaneously, his mind had begun to pull away. His personal data logs would later show that he had fainted. They would also contain numerous entries of gibberish designed to cloak the interference of a player operating outside the normal bounds. It had been so dim, the sudden _grip_ of a hand on his tensed shoulder, but he had felt it before the unconscious had thickened and made him numb to everything. 

He had awoken inside Link VRAINS without serious injury (a misalignment of the senses that could damage the psyche, a fundamental _problem_ because his body would be forced to process a death that had not occured).

The sight that greeted him next had been of that avatar's long, white coat drifting over the ruined, concrete floor of a building far away from the activity of the player hubs. The solemn air of this other person had done something to his mind, frazzled and mangled and _broken_ as it had been. It had stilled itself. Ryoken had turned his head, the transparent mask catching the light. 

With a ticking notification, the next crosswalk light switched from red to green, and it was unlikely that, turning his head again, Yusaku really would find Ryoken there in the thin cluster of other pedestrians. It didn't happen, and yet-

And yet Ryoken's lesson was still so vivid to him. It superseded the tangle of his worries for a moment, short but crucial. 

Three things. 

Three angles of approach. 

\---

When Yusaku nudged his front door open and then kicked his shoes off, the sneakers knocked into Shouichi's boots and Jin's hightops. 

"Any problems?" Shouichi asked from the couch, his fingers clicking out against his laptop's keyboard.

"No."

"Hmm. That means we can now focus on this mess, huh?" Shouichi drawled, his screen plastered with articles by Dr. Leibe, the windows overlapping like scraps of newsprint for a child's papier-mâché project. 

Leaning against the counter, Jin had initiated a staring contest with his tablet, and because the usual SOLtiS wasn't prancing into the room and then striking a pose, Ai must have been very, very preoccupied. Withdrawing even more of his self from this physical world. 

Time alone, Yusaku knew, could be necessary.

He left the duel disk on the TV stand. The lights stayed off, a faint electric hum working its way out from far beneath the plain, bulky panels. 

"Has Judai said anything?" Yusaku asked, cracking open his laptop and sitting next to Shouichi. For a beat, his fingers just stayed over the keys, the screen black. Three things.

Make a plan.

As he started shoving words into a text file, Shouichi let out a low grumble -- amused, though. Not annoyed. 

"He wished you good luck on that history test tomorrow."

Yusaku just blinked at him, Kusanagi's smile going wide enough to crinkle the corners of his eyes. Jin spoke up next.

"That newest member of Team Player is the wildcard in our deck, I've realized. He just showed up, took some of your food, and then ran off again, as if that counts as 'investigating'..."

"His methods are different from ours," Yusaku agreed, jotting down another sentence. "However, we know more about what his abilities are now, and if we need him, he will cooperate with us."

"...You got all of that from a duel versus him?"

He shook his head, starting a new paragraph. No, that understanding of Judai had happened in stages. Regardless of how it formed, it existed now, and that was the most important aspect. 

"We'll go over our plan in more detail once Ai is back," he said, no one questioning what he meant by that -- Ai retreating was rare but not unknown to any of them, burrowing himself away in incomprehensible streams of data. "We have a lead with Dr. Leibe and Dr. Aoyama. We need to investigate their actions leading up to the dirigible incident, as well as to confirm if anyone else was targeted by Calamity in a similar way."

"That's...looking like a lot of reading," Shouichi commented, more articles flashing across his crammed screen. From the titles alone, it was clear that Dr. Leibe had a vested interest in multiplayer games. And collaborating on articles with high page counts. "Not to mention all the analysis on Link VRAINS we'll have to do in...granular detail."

"Yes."

"...You're going to skip class tomorrow, aren't you?"

Yusaku shrugged. 

Which was enough of an answer for Shouichi to swear under his breath and then simulate smacking his own forehead with that sticker-covered laptop, the largest one across the back reading 'COFFEE REQUIRED'.

"I swear… If I have to call your school pretending to be your uncle _again_ , I might have a mid-life crisis. In my twenties."

"That was only once," Yusaku stated, deadpan. His plummeting attendance had only become a problem once the principal himself had started demanding a meeting with Yusaku's caretakers instead of apology slips and fake-but-close-enough-to-look-legitimate doctor's notes. Via video chat, Shouichi had suggested the phone call as a joke, and he had then watched with obvious horror when Yusaku had not taken it as a joke. 

"Uh, if it's a history test, I can probably help you out," Jin offered from behind the couch. "Then again… The world is kinda...ending… Maybe… Judai says a lot of weird stuff once he really gets talking. 'The ravaging light wants to eliminate all darkness, even though it's darkness that creates life.' …Seriously, I'd skip class too."

"...You sure he's not trying to recruit you to a cult when I'm not around?" Shouichi asked, throwing Jin a skeptical look, and Yusaku felt himself smile a little, impossible as it should've been.

The doctor's train would've reached the airport by now. The questions had only multiplied ever since the airship had tilted and plummeted down. Ai was distracted. Judai's notions of light and dark needed to be addressed further. Last week, Yusaku's therapist had reminded him to take small steps forward instead of rushing headfirst into new challenges. 

The universe -- with its many collisions caused by random chance and ever-expanding potential for chaos -- had put up a difficult challenge, but he wasn't alone for it. 

The plan was based off those three things, and, with a glance at his friends, he began to divide up their tasks. The cautious optimism was frail, and yet it was there all the same.

\---

At 11-something PM, Yusaku was brushing his teeth while zoning out. If that could count as a hobby, he would say it was one he did pretty frequently -- the brush caught between his back teeth while he just...thought, a drop of water falling off the faucet with a distant 'plunk'.

The patter of bare feet in the hallway was not human. 

Yusaku had never seen those button-up pajamas before, pink and fleece with moon stencils in violet. Ai's dark hair was in a lop-sided bun, the golden strands rebellious. Pale fingers tugged at one sleeve, and because Ai kept his chin down, their eyes did not so easily meet, not at first. Yusaku became acutely aware of the toothbrush in his mouth.

He took it out. Dropped it on the sink. 

"You're back," he said, and Ai didn't exhale, but he did slouch forward, the SOLtiS letting out a distorted whine. 

"Yeaaah, well… Sorry 'bout that, although it's only one of several thousand things I've got to apologize for," Ai drawled, hushed, and it had taken Yusaku awhile to place it, that feeling of Ai's that was no longer muted. 

Shame. 

"Are you okay?"

Ai snorted at the question, leaning one shoulder against the chipped door frame. "Ah, come on. You're playing it so cool, Yusaku-chan. We...both know I'm the one who messed up today. And in general, ha."

"How?"

"How?!" Ai repeated, and because the cramped bathroom was not ideal for any of this, Yusaku switched the light off, reached for Ai's right hand, and led him down the hallway, down the stairs, and down to sit on the edge of his unmade bed. The insignia pressed into Ai's throat glowed through the fabric. "Uh… You mean...aside from dragging a SOLtiS that you didn't even know I had to a situation that you didn't even know I was going to shove myself into? Oh, not to mention that I let the doctor boldly stride away, with the last word, I might add. Talk about embarrassing..."

Yusaku shook his head. Ai's fingers were stiff, as if they were immovable. "You didn't 'let' anyone get away. You were able to talk to the doctor in a way that no one else could have."

"...You're actually going to compliment me, huh?"

"Why shouldn't I?" was Yusaku's counter, and it worked, Ai's gaze flickering over to him for a fraction of a second -- like two lines of gold. "We're all learning as individuals. It's part of being alive, Ai."

"'To err is to be human,' huh? Or…AI, I guess," Ai grumbled, and Yusaku squeezed, once. 

"That's the right idea."

"You wanna know something else?"

"What is it?" Yusaku asked, and while the SOLtiS body stayed stiff and unreadable, he could feel the prickles of Ai's worry inside his own body, poking up through his veins. And so, he didn't rush. He continued to hold Ai's cold hand. 

When Ai began, his voice carried with it that same cold. "I...keep thinking over and over again about how if he was still here, Lightning would take one _look_ at Calamity's plan and, boom, he'd solve it. He wouldn't even need a nanosecond. It'd just...be _done_ , and then we could all go, I dunno, screw off and build a theme park for AIs or something." There was a gap, the mouth of the SOLtiS beginning to form around words but stopping once, twice. After the third time, Ai continued. "Maybe some of his simulations even accounted for this, but, hey, it's...not like I can ask him."

"Ai…"

"Thinking that way isn't fair to Jin, is it? Like, hey! I wish the Ignis who...did those things to you was _back_ and part of the team so I could throw him at the problem, because I'm not capable of- I...swear that I like people. I-I swear it! I swear, I swear…"

"I know you do. It's okay," Yusaku said, gripping the hand of the SOLtiS again. The touch was doubled by what he felt for Ai -- a warming spark. And-

The SOLtiS stood up. 

Took one step away. 

"That's yet-another example of how I'm failing you. I was ready to fuse with you before. I...was crazy for it," Ai said, and Yusaku's chest hurt, hearing that voice warble, shake. "And now? Oh, _now_ I can't _stop_ getting closer to your thoughts and how you _feel_ and what you _want_ and-"

"It's okay."

A hollow laugh. It chilled his blood. 

Ai did not look back at him. The energy under his skin pulled away, shrinking from the matter of his self. 

"I'm a real bastard, aren't I? I scraped the whole 'fusion' plan. I put the biggest, _biggest_ red 'X' over it that I could. But, hey, apparently that doesn't matter! Even if I don't _mean_ to, I'll take our consciousnesses and smash them together anyways!"

Yusaku had not planned to address their burgeoning connection like this, not with a fractured mind and a helplessness that threatened to choke him. 

But this was important. 

He could say it for Ai. 

"We're still individuals. The connection, it's not erasing who we are, and it doesn't feel like something that only one of us controls. It's still developing. Just like I am. Just like both of us are. It's...a reflection of our selves and this bond we have."

"Huh. A special Origin-Ignis feature that was added in reality's latest patch?" Ai grumbled. 

"Maybe. I don't have the answers," Yusaku replied, and he grit his teeth when Ai chuckled, the sound of it wrong. Like hearing a machine whine and stutter before it broke. 

"Oh, Yusaku… I was so ready for it during our duel. I would've given into that impulse, the one that told me to crawl through the pieces of your mind and bury myself in all of _you_ until such divisions became arbitrary. I would've taken our connection and strangled us both with it, letting a new consciousness rise up from the... _stuff_ that remained. You know, like how little plants can grow over decaying logs in the forest or whatever. That sort of thing." The tone was flippant, the SOLtiS jerking its hands through a playful gesture. 

Yusaku did not back down. 

"You were in pain. I understand that."

"Ha. Sure, but who says that this impulse will stay dead forever? Maybe it's pulling us closer and closer, _forcing_ that to happen."

He gripped the sheets where the hand of the SOLtiS had lain over. Ai had to see that, to _know_ that. 

His heart was with his Ignis. 

"Ai, I still love y-"

"You know what? I have lots and _lots_ of late-night reading to do. I peeked at your plan earlier, by the way, so I better get started on my share," Ai rambled, and Yusaku shook his head, imploring him to stop. "Let's put this whole physically-impossible-connection-thing on hold, alright? I'll be a good AI-assist in the meantime and stop screwing things up, hopefully. Haha!"

"If you need time, I'll wait for you. But try to-"

"Don't you have a history test tomorrow? Better get some sleep then! Well, I'm off! See yah!" Ai chirped, and then the SOLtiS crumpled to the floor, hitting it before Yusaku could even move. Its head bounced up and down with a sickening thud.

Yusaku stood up. 

Without Ai's instructions, the body of it was stiff, resisting as Yusaku carefully moved its heavy limbs until the scene was less morbid, Ai's prized project no longer in a careless heap. As getting it off the floor was impossible, Yusaku yanked a blanket off his bed and laid it over the legs and torso of the SOLtiS. He managed to shove a flattened pillow under its head next. 

He rubbed at his tired eyes. 

The duel disk was lying on his desk, and, taking it, he walked back to his bed and sat down. He held it against his chest. He did not grasp at the connection. 

Instead, he spoke out loud in the dark room. 

"Goodnight."

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Assorted: I mostly just wanted a scene of 'Ai-doing-stuff' here, hence the doctor plot. Plus, robots are neat. 
> 
> YGO: Maiami is a location from ARC-V that I used just so I'm not constantly making up new locations. Plus, I...imagine it would still exist in this timeline?
> 
> Ai: Someone on twitter was like 'hey judai fused with his partner but yusaku didn't -- an't that interesting?', and... YEAH. let's talk about fusion more obviously and what that would mean to everyone here. namely, it is a...loaded concept, in some regards. Although, I will say that I'm not going to crash this fic into angst for chapter after chapter (I...have [written a lot of that lately](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19703437/chapters/46629172)).
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope to have some highschool antics soon.


End file.
